life drawing

Feeling the Love

I have been running on empty but I feel the love

While I stand before the people drawing me, the warmth inside of me just reaches out

All I feel is love, I am the love

I wish them every clarity of co-ordination and fulfilment as they connect eye to hand to paper

I send my being out towards them and give them all I am

Pure happiness is in me, around me, we feel it together

There is no worry, and I am not my body

I may be in it now, but I am love and light

I return to being my essence and that is what they feel whether they know it or not

In my place of comfort my body informs me how to move and what to express, it just does it

Because that’s what makes me feel the love

Mountain of Strength

High up in Crystal Palace, Caron Clarke is making me cringe.

How she dares tell her attendees to complete her outlandish tasks… is anathema to me. Can she not read the horror in their grimaces?

Maryam Saleemi suggests the dance I want to leap into!

Risks are how we learn. Not worrying about what others think, including our friends, allows us to grow. Clarke is right.

On Thursday evening the class want an easy session; if they haven’t been before they are in for a shock. OUT of your comfort zone will Caron wrench you. She will work the lethargy from you and replace it with collage, blind and non-writing hand drawing…

Martin Cleave makes the most of Caron being distracted by someone else

But seriously I have a massive soft spot for Caron. I’m always creasing at her antics, and her own buoyant smile bounces into my daydream. Having modeled for her a few years, I am familiar with the surprised transformations she elicits from her class.

Our friendship began when we discovered we both play the violin badly and she asked me to fiddle whilst modelling, sometimes we did duets.

I cannot believe the exercises she asks the class to do. I sense disgust

They will never come back. Can’t she see how unfeasible her idea is, that they are tired and just want to relax with some life drawing, not be jerked into spasms of disconcerting creativity?

Sunita Sharma is not put off by the challenges

But towards the end, the class is back with her, and they learnt something new.

It is Caron’s sheer boldness that asserts itself in fact in such delicate form which I admire. For her sumptuous watercolours, and bright shining humour. I don’t cringe anymore, but enjoy an extra giggle as she wades in without goggles. She is the real thing, all by herself and perfectly amazing, always brimming with abundant beauty, natural laughter.

In her Saturday long pose sessions Caron paints

Superb model Vanessa Abreu by Caron

Antenna, Crystal Palace & Caron combine for a groovy formula. The place is a recording studio; musicians, generally rock, indie wander about, tuning up on the roof, strumming in the yard. On my way to the loo my scanty covering flies up – I can feel the testosterone behind me. Hey – if I hang about long enough I might even get asked to be in a band… though I’ve not tried yet, guess I’d rather reach that by other means

are they musicians or punters?

Role Reversal

When I met you I was nervous, I mean I couldn’t ask you out.

You were like an angel, just appearing, offering to model and then when you did, showing me, explaining to me how to draw. I’d drawn before, from photos, and in a very technical way, and you showed me how to draw with feeling, expression, how to capture essence. In a very remarkable short time, you showed me this and it changed the way I worked. There was no looking back. It was a gift.

And there was a new and powerful connection – I trusted you and felt very open to you. That I moved you was even more amazing. I’d never have guessed yet it felt quite natural, that it was new for you too. That you had opened up because you wanted to share, to talk, and in me you had found an avenue, a channel for communication, which for some reason, you lacked everywhere else.

I hadn’t been with a woman for a while. I’d had setbacks, a health problem, and my confidence had been low. Medication made my sex drive weak, I wasn’t in a great place. Had the shit knocked out of me you might say. Fucked around by the hospital, doctors didn’t know what it was and I didn’t talk about it with friends… My habits had to change with the meds.

So when you had no idea about me, but were so open, so giving, so lovely, and I knew you thought I was part of some big cool group of friends, well I had to let you know, you know. That it wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to mislead you. What you may have known about me from years ago was no longer the case. Of course some of it still stood, but like most of us, I had changed. So it came out, and you too were telling me things about your past which concerned you, stuff that’s not so easy to bring up, and you knew because of the people I know, that I’d probably understand. We come from the same background. There’s an understanding.

Lessons In Love ~ & The Tribe

Aaron's drawing as I explain something

I grew up in a tribe of spiky painted fiends. Incest rife and hardware mainlined, I passed around and broke up the Millenium. Wandered; foreign people and marrying out.

Ron Lawrence's quick watercolours

Jolted I set to slowly tracking back. The old postcode; brushing by; how to arrive? Through the female line and in the right time. Careful balances inclined.

Christine Angell's blurred vision

To harmonise old tensions – find the one who can set me straight. Him behind me, my new mate.

Angell on form

Greenwich. Mean. Time.

Y.P.A.s are my favourite people to model for at the moment. That’s Young Portuguese Architects if you don’t know; not to be confused with Young British Artists – a very different bunch, not generally into life drawing, apart from Tracey Emin, but she’s not easy to get hold of right now.

The woman wants to draw me as I move in slow motion, a sort of personal variant on tai chi. Well that is like asking me to do what I love, and paying me.

Then I am to lie on a sofa with my legs up against the wall. They’re looking for a different perspective. I enjoy a head rush until my feet are bloodless.

Lounge. Assymetrically. Again I do that naturally.

High up through one way glass I see a familiar evening vista. It’s like the view from my bedroom in close up.

By the water’s edge here is much dereliction – a Greenwich waiting to rise… if money still flows.

Wired for Work

At an advertising agency in Kensington I am surprised by how lovely the young things make me feel.
A very dry, cold ‘theatre’ room with a cheap decor, slowly fills with keen, appreciative artists. I don’t want to like them; I checked out the multinationals they represent in the portfolio down in the lobby, but these yes privileged persons, have been requesting life drawing sessions from their seniors for some time; have been starved, so this once monthly occasion is feted.
I relax, improvising with the furniture, admiring their sketches. There is a chill at first, so I naturally huddle into protective, warming, apparently sex-kitten poses! Then a quality heater is delivered, and I uncurl into passionate, open posture; I let myself be the way I really am – cute, coquettish and angularly striking.
A young man announces he modelled in Florence whilst attending classes at the world’s premier life drawing academy. I ask if it paid for his tuition and he said he was lucky to have parents covering that. But knowing that he knows what it’s like to do what I do, does make me feel much more at home.
Candles are brought to illuminate my feet and I bask in loving ambiance.
Red flows to unwind their charcoaling fingers and lubricate a love for drawing. Why do I feel so enamoured? Am I projecting the love I desire on to these rat race rabbits? If I am I’m sure they feed it back because by the end I overflow. I do not resent their commercial creed; art unites us for a short exercise in loving connection where the only touch is on paper. They allowed me to be beautiful, and even to forget about sex, which is an achievement at present!
A good model friend of mine advised me on structured meditation while modelling, to avoid unwanted thoughts and attention. I cannot instill this instantly, but something of her wise words must have sunk in – I feel like I am on a higher plane. I’ve always fallen in my own time to the rhythm of meditation, but with practise a greater discipline will work for me. I do not want my sexual appetite to get the better of me, there is more to art and life.

Clawing my way out of Hell

My lungs fill more deeply with some airborne knowledge of provision, that I am in a haven unaffected by cuts. When the ground opens in London sucking away the mulch, lucky people here will leave on a special ship.
In a lofty studio a keeper guides their brightness softly.

A young God recreates Dante’s ‘Inferno’, depicting me falling into fiery pits of hell. I hang off a ladder legs splayed, neck dangling simulating agony, it really hurts.

At the second circle for eternal lust, the strongest hurricane sweeps sinners endlessly; I reach out.

Swamp-bound I sulk  in anger; and at the 9th and ultimate Satanic hotbed I freeze in motion. Grateful to reach the end of this hellish phase, I rejoice, marveling at the imitation.