'Why do you do it?': Commentary from an Idealist Art Model

Its cold in the studio sometimes… 

…Then there are the times when the heat is so intense I can barely stay on my feet. During the winter the temperature of the room can be controlled. But it’s the summer months that can be a challenge. When you have low blood pressure, like I do, hot temperatures make your blood vessels dilate. It can be very hard to hold a standing pose when all your blood is rushing to your legs. You just have to point all the fans at your legs, crank up the air conditioner (if they have one) and pray, hope and cross your fingers that on any given day it just so happens that your artists want to draw a seated figure.

‘Do you just want to be naked?’ That’s what my best friend asked me when I broke the news. ‘No’ I told her. It’s just something I wanted to do for myself. It was an idea that came to me out of … nowhere. It just came to me… because it was meant for me. 


All in one instant and for several moments and days afterward, I felt this ferocious longing to use my body as a form of expression. Within a week I became quasi-obsessed with the sublime nature of the female form.

‘I want to offer myself up to be depicted through the eye of an artist’ I boldly stated to nobody but myself. And there… presto!... it was done… I was determined… because that’s usually how life works, doesn’t it?..

‘It’s really more technical than that’ is what one of my artists told me. As a model I’m always concerned with evoking some sort of fluidity, beauty, emotion, commitment, or understanding through my poses. I enjoy dedicating part of my energy to the goal of another person. To a creation. Maybe, in the hope that I will be the inspiration behind some artist's ultimate works of art. That I will help them to remember the reason why they ever decided to become an artist… These are my thoughts as I stand in front of a room full of focused gawkers with light beams and heaters blasting mercilessly at me.

‘It’s really more technical than that’ he informs me. After over 2 decades of studying and depicting the human form through sculpture, I think he’d know. When you’re up there on the stand they’re really looking to master your bone structure and the relationship in space and size of body parts and weight distribution. Its technical training.

…But that doesn’t deter me. When I’m posing for an artist, we’re in two different worlds. We’re both depicting our own ideas. I’m thinking about how a pose makes me feel. Making sure that I feel open and comfortable and that through that openness I can express some...thing outwardly that is worth artistic depiction. It is then up to the artist to perceive me and depict me through their own interpretation.

It’s an exchange that I treasure.

*Please contact for artists' details