Beginning Life Modeling has been a huge influence and boost of confidence for me and my artwork over the past year.
Learning to see the object or content of figurative artworks from their internal point of view and to see myself as subject rather than creator has been a strange and eye-opening adventure.
Modeling has begun to influence my current practice particularly as I consider the mentally internal body and feelings behind an art object. I have begun to represent or mimic these through art as well as representing the purely visual.
There is another political layer to life modeling which has also grown in its influence over my artwork correspondingly to my time spent as a model. This is a feminist issue of the body as an unideal reality, rather than an oppressed object. The idea of the gaze and inferred power of the artist over those they represent, collector over those they can ‘own’ through owning artwork. Life models have traditionally been the poorer, lower classes, from prostitutes and servants in the Victorian era to students and working class today. This position is associated with powerlessness, but it is surprising the extent to which modeling brings a feeling of empowerment, control, self-confidence.
Showing and feeling that you are comfortable in your own skin, and confident about your naked body is important to me as a feminist, I believe that showing myself unadorned and ‘as nature intended’ and showing the confidence this brings to me is an important step in creating a free confident society.,
Through my art I am presenting an unideal body, which shows the reality of being inside a person rather than viewed from a distance. I feel that I am presenting a view of the world which is less centered around appearances, beauty, or ideal apparitions.
Imagery which has been made within the life drawing sessions I model for and attend is shown below. Spending large amounts of time with these artists and knowing them both as a fellow artist and model has also changed the way I view artworks and has taught me to consider styles of art which I had previously ignored.
Rebecca Lois 