I wasn’t allowed to go to art school. So I went to Wesleyan University. There, Drawing 1 was known as a bucket-list class. Somehow, one semester made anyone capable of charcoaling incredibly lifelike studies of hands.

My drawing professor became important to me. She lauded my propensity for using color and encouraged me to lie at the top of a graveyard at sunset, covered in flowers, take photos, and recreate it for my final. Her empathy and thoughtfulness made it feel safe to venture into modeling. The Studio Art Department loved to “hire their own.’’ Artists made the best models. We knew how to procure the gestural, how to be poetic with our positioning—darting and dashing limbs around for the most interesting composition.

That’s how it came to be that on a Saturday afternoon I might be driving deep into Wake Forest to a small home studio blanketed with fall leaves. Maybe the host artist’s wife makes me a martini to enjoy on my breaks from the pose. Maybe one of the artists has commissioned an artisan charcuterie board (artists support small businesses) because it’s her birthday and she’s turning 71. She gives everyone a gift to celebrate: a small personal viewfinder that has shade saturation levels on its frame.

It’s not just staying still, figure modeling. It’s almost meditative, and you get to liken yourself to a muse with your energy, gaze, and expression. Sometimes, I adopt one singular pose, and artists have three hours to bring me to life. Some sketch furiously in small notebooks, some bring their sets of oils and a primed canvas.

If it’s a drawing class, they study the figure more than the details. I pivot on the balls of my feet and swivel, alternating between heights of standing, bending and crouching, sitting, and kneeling. Thinking, How do I entangle my limbs to allow for folds in the skin? How do I stretch and jut into angles that illustrate negative space?

The community has seen me through my postgrad transitions. Alia, a local artist, has hosted me in her studio as a girl cobbling together gigs, listened to me wax dismally about my corporate job, and watched me find new life as a teacher. Alia referred me to the moderators at the Durham Arts Council, and every class I modeled for would have artists asking me to model for their other classes. I quickly found myself surrounded by artists. People were so excited to be in practice with one another, and as I looked around at all the different faces studying me, I thought about the implication of the varying ages of the artists. Young artists today are incredibly demanding, stringent, and impatient. I say that as one of them. There is something to learn from those that are older than us, have lived more, and still keep art as a part of their livelihood and daily practice.

People sketch during a long-pose figure drawing class at the Durham Arts Council. Credit: Photo by Angelica Edwards

Linda is a regular painter at Alia’s studio. She turns 67 at the end of February but says she feels like she did in her 30s. Linda didn’t start referring to herself as an artist until the last decade or so. She majored in the sciences but loved the pottery classes she took in college. Later, with a busy corporate career, she used the money she made with her full-time job to fall in love with oil painting. Setting up a “home office,” she painted while she took conference calls long before there was Zoom.

Hedy is an artist at the Durham Arts Council. She’s a 74-year-old military brat who has lived all over, participating in figure drawing groups here and there for 30 years. As a dancer, she was “enamored with the figure,” and took a liking to the (sometimes monotonous) practice of studying the body. When she was four, she got in trouble for drawing on the blank pages in books. She didn’t start calling herself an artist until she was 20, at the death of her mother, who was “the artist in the family before that.”

Linda remembers spending time at the easel in kindergarten. J tells of preferring paints over dolls as a child. Darya says she was shy in her relationship with art at first, but developing her niche made her more comfortable in her skin. 

Jane, 80, says that “now that I am retired from business, from sailing, and have become a widow, making art full-time has filled the places left by these major changes in my life.”

Crystal, 40, says “I am happy with my growth in art at this point in my life. I have more time now in this season of my life. It’s fun! It’s relaxing!”

When asked what advice they would give to other artists, Jane says, “Cast your mistakes in bronze. Keep them around enough to learn from them.”

Linda says, “The time is now …. Don’t wait.”

Crystal tells us to explore.

Darya implores us to keep trying new methods and mediums until we find the one that can say what we need to tell the world.

An artist sketches during a long-pose figure drawing class at the Durham Arts Council. Credit: Photo by Angelica Edwards

We all want to be artists. It might be a desire we have to extend lifelong patience to. As J sums up, doing art is more gratifying than any product.

When Hedy took a turn as moderator, she wanted me to model. It provided the perfect backdrop for bringing this column to life. I thought to myself, “The photographer for this article that I’m writing is giving me a ride to the drawing class where I’m the model.” As I lay strewn across the platform in front of all these artists, watching INDY photographer Angelica weave around the easels to take photos of their drawings of me, I felt like both artist and muse at once.

How lucky am I that I get to say that?

Elim Lee is a Georgia peach who took a detour in New England and came back to her roots in the South this past year. Her least-in-progress, most-finished project is her children’s book Needle and the Too Big World. Follow her on Twitter at
@wellwhatgives and Instagram at @elimscribbles

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