Westminster Quaker Meeting House, London, 24 June 2025

30 Jun 2025

This Tuesday session at Westminster Quaker Meeting House completed a six-day hat-trick of bookings with London Drawing (see also Thursday and Saturday). The format was familiar – a warm-up and short poses extending to medium poses before ending with a single long pose – but this one literally started on the wrong foot.

I got the opening 10-minute pose badly wrong. I’d planned to stand with my right foot on a low folding step, but made a mistake in moving the step back a few extra inches so it wouldn’t obscure my standing foot. This tilted my weight towards the raised foot, which was already on its toes and now over-balanced…

Within seconds my sole focus was pain-management. Somehow I made it to the end but when tutor Anne asked if I could “hold it for another minute” the answer had to be “no“. Unfortunately in modelling, troubles don’t end when the initial discomfort ends; I had weakened myself and would suffer for it throughout the rest of the first half.

For the long pose, I asked Anne if there was any particular alignment or arrangement she would prefer. She duly showed me a kind of comfortable side-saddle slouch on a chair – perfectly reasonable – but was rather hesitant in doing so. Apparently another (unnamed) model had recently instructed her: “don’t tell me how to pose!”

I guess it’s a question of tone and context. Personally I imagine there to be an infinite variety of poses, I can’t possibly conceive of them all, and I don’t have the advantage of being able to observe my work from artists’ perspectives in the specific setting and lighting. Hence, I’m always happy for others to suggest poses.

Of course, it then has to be 100% within my own agency to determine how any given suggestion might be realised through my individual physicality. But I like the idea of a negotiated pose where both parties make their proposals and the ultimate settlement is an outcome satisfactory to all. Figurative art works best as a conversation.