This week we are enjoying a visit by our nine-year-old grandson. These experiences are always enjoyable, but invariably present their own challenges and surprises. Working with him in the studio on a little print experiment presented one such experience. It is my habit, when I return from one of my weekly life-drawing classes, to pin up the best of my work for critical appraisal of one kind or another. Several such pieces, from two different classes, are currently up there. I had forgotten entirely their presence when I set up the little workshop with our grandson. Not surprisingly he noticed that his grandfather had pictures of ladies with no clothes on on the wall of his studio, and asked about that. His comments were quite interesting.
One of the drawings (of a model in her fifties) caught his attention most of all, and drew the remark that it would “remain with him for the rest of his life”. I was really not sure what to make of that, and before I had the opportunity to clarify things he asked me why I had pictures of “naked” women on the wall. I explained that, if you are concerned to develop your skill as an artist the human body offers one of the most variable and complex subjects available to us, and that women’s bodies are, if anything, more complicated and challenging than those of men. The challenge is never-ending, and facing it is a great way of developing your skills as an artist. I think that he followed that argument, but what gave me continuing cause for thought was his use of words. He spoke always of the models as “naked” rather than “nude”, and I’m still pondering on that one. Was it a matter of his limited vocabulary, and the unfamiliarity of the terms “nudity” and “nude”? Or does he differentiate between these ideas, so that what he saw was indeed “nakedness” rather than “nudity”? An interesting question!