1973: The visitors
Rory has one knee on the floor, the other tucked under his chin as he paints. His canvas is propped on two milk crates set over newspaper laid out to protect the floor. His paint tubes rest in two six-quart baskets when he tidies up, but the selection of tubes he’s currently using is spread out on the floor by his left hand. He’s left-handed, which seems appropriate due to his generally contrary nature. His painting pallet is a piece of cardboard box that also sits to his left side.
“Do you want something to eat or drink?”
His answer is off-hand, his focus on the brushstrokes and composition before him.
“I’m alright. Go ahead, if you’re hungry. I’ll make myself a sandwich later.”
“No, I’ll wait for you.”
I settle into the one chair at the table with my notebook and I watch the man I love as he gives himself to his painting. He never complains about the strain on his back, or his legs going to sleep due to this awkward posture for hours at a time while he paints. He has told me he’s more comfortable drawing me standing, saying it’s about perspective. That might be the main reason he likes me to stand, but when I stand he sits in a chair. I’ve wondered if perspective or creature comfort appeals to him more? I’m not sure he’d reveal the answer. As I’ve said, he doesn’t complain, but he rarely shares. It’s the same for me, frankly. Each of our focus rests on the importance of creating art. Maybe that’s why we work so well together? When I’m naked before him, I feel we communicate more fully than we ever could with words. I feel his presence differently, my skin becomes a thousand nerve endings.
Some of my poses are easier than others to hold. I can’t say I enjoy standing, unless it’s a quick pose, but our process has nothing to do with his speed in drawing. He lays his lines down easily these days, not struggling as he did when we first met. I can see the effect of my posing, the improvement in his perspective, the confidence of his lines. It’s more that he sketches the same pose so many times over. My problem is how to balance raised limbs within an interesting pose. I often copy what Rodin had his models do. Maybe allowed is a better word for the orchestration of poses for Rodin’s statues.
Yet, it applies to my own drawings. Arranging a pose that can be held for a long time, I mean. It sounds crazy to say I do drawings of my own poses, but I play with similar scenarios. Rory and I have entirely different styles, but drawing a pose I’ve taken, using the information gleaned from my muscle aches, leads to decisions about the best poses I can do for him. My drawings of my own poses, in a studio where the evidence hangs on the wall, allows me to understand what he sees. I resist drawings of inanimate objects like fruit bowls or flowers in a vase. Drawing a pose, from within the body that experienced the pose, is how I’m practising my art. Rory doesn’t pose for me. I hear my repetition of that complaint, that stress. To cope, I consider how Rodin and his models worked out the same issues I have, 100 years or so before me. Rodin’s models were artists, too.
Take Rodin’s John the Baptist, for instance. An arm lifted beside him, unbalanced, would be impossible to hold for long. I’m sure the model for his Age of Bronze appreciated the difference in that pose, arm raised beside the ear, elbow bent, forearm resting on top of his head. It’s almost impossible to hold a pose with a raised arm for more than a quick sketch, unless you find a way to support it. Hands can rest on hips, or hang beside them. It’s not that I don’t want to do complicated poses. If he were a photographer there’d be no limit to what I’d offer. We experiment more with the poses when I stretch out on the bed like a nude by Egon Schiele or Walter Grammatté, my body twisted and turning at awkward angles. Rory has ideas we adjust and collaborate on, making the final piece a result of our concessions. I’m always providing input. What he desires is sometimes beyond my physical endurance when I stand. This only makes it more real. It reflects what a woman’s body can naturally endure.
We’re so caught up in our work as painter and model, we put little effort into furnishing the two rooms we rent in this divided mansion. Our main room is the size of two normal bedrooms, though that’s what it would have been for the original inhabitants. Our home is simple and minimal, only the absolutely necessary furniture. One chair is a wooden crate that used to collect fruit but now offers us seating. However, the walls in our home don’t lack decoration. They’re studded by a multitude of brilliant jewels, canvases of various sizes butt up against each other. Each one is unique, though several could be grouped under a theme. The paintings hang so tightly they almost hide the colour of the walls. This main room is large enough we can separate to focus on our own work when we need to. Rory kneels before his canvases while I write or draw at the table.
We use the shared kitchen down the hall for fridge space and washing dishes. Further down again is our shared bathroom. We’re on the second floor in a mansion divided into a large rooming home. There are two rooms on the opposite side of the hall, one rented by my brother, Weylin, the other seemingly used by different people each month. A family rents the entire bottom floor, while an old drunk rents the attic. The superintendent for the building resides in the basement, though the ceiling is so low he can barely stand up straight in his rooms. Our suspicion is he tolerates this and collects our rent in exchange for free accommodation.
Our regular visitors continue to be my brother, Rory’s best friend Noel, and Rory’s friend from work, Manuel. Yet lately, we receive visitors who are both unwelcome and un-refusable. They arrive late at night, around 2:00 or 3:00 am. Be careful, the voice in my headwarns as soon as they knock. True friends hang back at that time of night, thinking it far too late even if light in our windows made it obvious we’re still awake. These visitors don’t give us that respect. We know why the police appear at our door.
