#12 Pose As An Art Model

It is a freezing Sunday night in Melbourne, the rain is coming down and I have about 3 layers on. My photographer and dear friend Renee is telling me it will all be fine.

I’m about to get naked, bare arsed in all my glory in front of a room full of twenty strangers….what the fuck am I doing? Is about all I can think.

We find the place, and step inside, the epitome Vegan, Hipster establishment Lentil as Anything Thornbury. It’s warm and inviting and smells amazing! I want to die. 

Artist and myself having a conversation before class starts

We make our way to the back of the restaurant to the Common Ground space where I am greeted with a smile and a hug by Pip an artist (check her amazing works on insta @PerformanceImprovementplan) and facilitator of Life drawing at Lentils, she has a warm kind face and we have a chat about what I’m about to do… I’m allowed a free meal but really I’m already trying not to vom with the anticipation of what is about to occur.

I get myself ready, change into a robe and start chatting to the artists that are starting to arrive. Many of the artists know I’m a first timer and intrigued about why I wanted to try art modelling, this is what they know about me already:

I’m Jodie, I’m 33, in the aftermath of my relationship breakdown I wrote a bucket list, as a way to start rebuilding.

As a result of infidelity in my marriage I had a lot of negative thoughts and feelings about my body and being good enough, which is something I knew I had to fight against.

The thought of taking my clothes off in front of others is very confronting, I put life modelling life on the list to challenge myself to see my body differently, as a instrument for art, as a sum of parts that create a form, where notions of fat, jiggly or imperfect are just something to be observed and captured, neither judged or embraced. My hope is that this experience will help me to take one more step towards a sense of being enough.

Pip making my introduction

I’ve never been a skinny girl, and I have grown up perpetually being on diets and trying to force by body to look and be something, quite frankly it will never be. I was always curvy, I was always big boobs and thick thighs, a bit of a tummy, and up until recently, I was always self-conscious and always looking at other women and wishing I was someone else.

After my husbands infidelity, those bad thoughts snowballed into overwhelming and complete shame, that I would never be enough, and that I was to old and fat to be desirable or attractive to anyone.

Over the last months I have been working very hard and paying a fortune to my psychologist to work through that bullshit…but in the moments before I had to take off my robe I regress, all those feelings come flooding back….ALL AT ONCE….What if they don’t think I’m good enough, how will my tummy look, my boobs sag too much, my skin is too pasty, my tuck shop lady arms are in fine form today….and the list goes on. Every imperfection was about to get laid bare.

Pip introduces me to the room and my heart drops as I realise this is the moment that I have to take off my robe, as I do I make eye contact with no one.

By the end of the session we were laughing and joking with each other, artists were talking to me about my story and their work, in less than an hour, I felt like there was a bond between us, an invisible connection and the baring of my curves is what started it all.

I had a platform in the middle of the room, with a rug and pillows, surrounded by about twenty chairs, where twenty artists sit chatting and getting materials ready. We started with two poses that went for two minutes followed by a five and ten minute pose, I started standing up and then sat down for the longer poses. Every time I got into pose I found a place to look on the ceiling or wall and breathed slowly trying to forget what was happening, I’m certain I must have looked like I was in pain or constipated.

My Third Pose

I could hear Renee taking pictures, I could heard pencils and erasers frantically moving across paper, and every moment I was thinking, its just one hour out of your whole life and then it will be over. Halfway through, Pip asks the artists to share their work….

Now, this is the moment where I feel like it was worth it, and I stopped stressing and just went with it.bI don’t know much about art, but what I laid my eyes on in that break blew me away. 

Every person in the room saw me and interpreted my body in a different way, some in colour some in black and white, some with pencils and some with pastel, in some I was myself, and in others I was imagined into something else. My round tummy and my thick thighs had been transformed into so many works of art, they were beautiful, laid out like jewels for me to admire. 

Art work that shared in the class

Final Pose

The works that were shared at the end of the class brought me to tears, I was a little tired, a bit cold, very emotional, and feeling overwhelmed by the art and experience, words were used like brave, beautiful, interesting, it seemed that the curves and hang of my body that have always been so hard for me to except about myself, were in fact the things that these artists were very accepting of – my imperfection was something interesting to draw, shadow, shape and curve, it seemed that when I was not being sexualised (by myself or others) everything about my body changed, and I was just me.

The night concluded with a wonderful artist by the name of Ian Calcutt offering me a drawing to take home, as well as Pip, which are both now proudly hanging on my walls at home (basically the first thing I did Monday morning). I walked away from my first bucket list completion with sense of being alive in a way I have never felt before, the warm feeling in my stomach and the smile on my face, I have never felt more myself.

Art by Ian Calcutt

All in all the hour and a half a spent naked in front of strangers made some real waves in changing my perspective on my body and myself.

I would like to thank Life drawing at Lentils, Pip Clark and all the artists for making me feel so comfortable and sharing their work with me and my wonderful friend Renee Bentley for her support and pictures.

Ian Calcutt, Pip Clark and myself

Ian and Pip with the art work they gifted me