Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Keyhole Sessions: 'Envy'

A Keyhole Life Drawing Session last night. The Keyhole is still working through the Seven Deadly Sins, and last night was Envy. These are all charcoal on 18" x 24" sheets of 90lb archival paper, or, in the last of the one of three models, pencil on primed canvas.

I put a post up of the ones with a Photoshop filter added to G+ and Facebook (see the end of this post), and the dearth, the silence, it was resounding. So I removed the 'offensive' drawings from both sites, and put this note up instead:
I deleted the Keyhole Session post I put up earlier. I keep forgetting that I shouldn't. Because it's staged performance, and while not my sexuality, I do support the freedom of others to practice 'alternative sexualities' if it's between consenting adults and no-one gets hurt. There is mojo in these life drawing sessions; the poses are great. Everyone at The Keyhole is an artist, all the models, the lady who runs it, those who come to draw. Everyone I've met is sweet in way young people are, and the atmosphere is happy, and everyone, artists and models, work very, very hard. It takes place in a bar. The models are on the stage, lit by stage lights, and we draw in a darkened room with drinks if we wish.

But posting the results of these few hours of drawing isn't fine in a public forum, or even an artist's forum, as those I belong to at G+ and on Facebook. I should know this from the past two times I attended one of these sessions. I even sat next to the art teacher who goes every month and does great drawings but who never posts them on-line. When asked, because he posts lots of other life drawing he does around the city, he says, "No, I never post these." He shrugs. It's not his 'thing,' and yet who would understand? Not posting makes sense. There's nothing inherently wrong with this life-drawing venue, but people make assumptions, and judgements. An embarrassing moment that I witnessed was afterwards, when one of the models came over and asked if he was "-"; he said yes. And she bubbled, "You taught me art in high school." He didn't know what to say; clearly he was trying to place her, this beautiful plump woman with purple hair. He found the drawings he'd done of her - all magnificently beautiful - and she oooh-ed one of them, but was talking to others and didn't pay much attention. I think he was trying to give them to her as a gift. He pulled them back and stuffed them into his portfolio and left. 

That said, below are the drawings I did last night, untouched. My mother is fast fading, and the family is spinning into a vortex. I don't when, or if I'll ever get back to 'finish' these, even to clean up their clumsiest spots.









And here's a slideshow of the drawings with the Photoshop filter I added (that I posted on-line, and also sent to The Keyhole Sessions for their the-morning-after-the-night-before-roundup/drawings):

___

 brendaclews.com

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A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___