It can be painful, it can be boring, and it requires focus. Because doing this interview is making me happy, so my poses later could be really open, whereas when I’m feeling depressed my poses can be more compact.” Minutes can seem like hours – it can be nightmarishīeing a life model isn’t easy. As he experimented, he realised he could create unique poses inspired by all sorts of things: branches in a tree, for instance, or poetry and music. “What they mean is: do I draw, sculpt, paint, take photographs?” He was once asked this straight after inhabiting a pose inspired by a character in a Titian painting: “I thought, ‘Look at what you were just drawing! What did you think that was? That was the work of art right there – and now it’s vanished.”īlake had no idea his body could be so flexible. I want to make them more even and reclaim the creative dimension that the model brings.”īlake says he’s often asked after sessions if he’s an artist himself. “There’s a hierarchical power structure: the artist is up here, the model down there. “The role of the life model has long been that of the servant or slave,” he says. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian A look at his Instagram reveals where he’s coming from – with some beautifully contorted poses that resemble dance or performance art. He’s about to deliver the first of several talks in art galleries on the contentious subject of Are Life Models Artists? His position is that they are more than simply source material for painters – they’re creative partners who use their bodies to “paint” the space around them.
I soon realised we are a team, all trying to be brave.”īlake is currently preparing to be brave once more.
“You might feel vulnerable posing, but as a painter I also know how vulnerable people can feel behind the easel – you are always questioning and judging yourself. “That’s the beauty of doing this,” she says. Like Blake, Lagarde says her hang-ups quickly dissipated. “I’d been waiting for someone to tell me it’s fine to pose for students if you’re different,” she says, over coffee near her London studio. This made her doubt whether she could become a life model – it took Blake to convince her that she could. “But I didn’t really think about the nudity,” she says, “because I was so obsessed with my hands.” The 25-year-old was born with amniotic band syndrome, which causes missing or malformed fingers and toes. Suzon Lagarde, a painter, wasn’t comfortable with the idea of nudity, either, when she decided to step over to the other side and pose naked.
“I just wanted to create something beautiful,” he says. But here, naked and still, he genuinely felt part of the creative process. Up until this point, Blake’s work in various museum admin positions had seemed somewhat meaningless. ‘Like sorcery’ … Dominic Blake poses in the Life Room at the Royal Academy, London.
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