>>>> Pete Owen

If there's anything left of me after work, I go to John's studio to take part in the life class there. We chat, draw, drink tea or coffee (John has a choice of beverages available) then we draw some more, the class ends; some of us go and drink beer together afterwards. I often feel that the marks I make on paper might simply be a pre-text for this interaction (social, sexual, intellectual, emotional) with a group of other people, at any rate the events, the climate, within the class certainly figures as a sub-text of the marks I make on the paper. Mostly the drawings that I do in John's class are of women. I'm a man, drawing a woman. It is, then, a drawing, a statement, of what I am not. Perhaps in drawing the outline of a woman, of what it is I am not, I'm trying, and trying hard, to establish what it is, then, that I am ? The drawings, or the drawings that I like, tend to be chaotic, messy, indistinct and, in a way, threatening. Perhaps it's important to me to have these qualities firmly situated in the image (in the body) of the other, of the model, of the woman ? If these drawings, then, are "about" anything, (and it seems a bit narcissistic to say so, but maybe that,s as it should be) then my drawings are "about" masculinity. John's class is a lot of fun, frustrating, but fun. Writing about it is less fun Other pages Stained Glass Window Love and Work rpto@btinternet.com