Current Exhibition: Obviously Nude: Sunday Morning Life Drawings 1990 - 2010

For nearly 20 years, a small group of artists has met to draw artists’ models, often on Sunday mornings, within a small geographic area just east of downtown Los Angeles.    Although the exact genesis of the group varies with the teller’s memory, sessions attended by the core cover at least 8 separate locations, beginning around 1990.

Why a single group of artists would maintain such consistency, amid changes of fortune and location, has something to say about what the practice of art demands.  

20 years of the same subject: the nude human figure--starting with a blank pad, or canvas, or block of clay, and commonly ending four hours later.  

Four hours commonly involves several hundred (if not a thousand) separate artistic decisions:  lengths, thicknesses, finish, and arch of each line; every color, every tint.  What to sharpen, what to smudge.  What to attempt, what to keep, and what to discard. 

20 long years of kvetching, struggling, intent (clothed) humans – trying to catch the singular essence of one, serene unclothed human.

Outside these life drawing sessions, each member of the group maintains a separate individual career, with separate subjects and artworks that may (or often) have nothing to do with drawings of models. But the act of coming together to draw/paint/sculpt a common subject has not given rise to any “group mind”.  Everyone has a unique dialog; an approach to life that results in an inborn style.  There is not a single piece in this exhibition that could be attributed to anyone but the artist who created it.  Despite 20 years of friendship and a common subject matter, these disparate portraits illustrate how absolute and vast the distance is between individual artists.

(“Above and Beyond” status is hereby awarded to Mike Vegas, who has for the last 15 years, has single-handedly organized these life drawing workshops, while moving through four separate studios.  Without his effort, this group would probably be denied much of its history).