Provost art gallery

Artist Statement On Drawings

The practice of drawing is a resource for other works but many stand on their own as a complete statement. While the experience of drawing the live model is a “tune-up” for my large-scale paintings, it is also, more importantly, a reminder that the idea of human depicting human is dramatic and implies a tangle of gender and representational issues. I am interested in creating a sense of the animus, a life-force coursing through people and events, and the body as an empowered physical presence. Since I am interested in an anthropological sense of human life, I look for models that exude animalistic flexibility.

Drawings like Honky-tonk Gal are derived from this process that provides useful discoveries unattainable by any other means: the tactile quality of actual flesh, finding unexpected shapes, and, most importantly, a heightened sense of reality. There is an exciting air of shared anticipation and partnership that happens when drawing directly from a great model.