figure drawing

12. 13. 23

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When all of my friends in high school were deciding their majors or where they wanted to go to college in order to become whatever; I myself never had a clue.

I mean, every day, many times a day, I was blinking my eyes and taking a stroll in the universe.

I just couldn’t see me being a dentist or a doctor or anything else and peacefully coexisting with this experience on an on-going basis.

If you can imagine: to have this experience is to experience everything, all at once, in an instant. It’s just not the kind of thing that can be contained inside of any one profession.

I decided to become an artist because I was good at it, but also because it seemed to be a way that I could keep my options open.

But being a Folzenlogen, I knew I had to find a way to make a living.

We Folzenlogens are a very responsible people.

So for my first year of college I went to the University of Cincinnati, DAA (Design, Art and Architecture) in order to explore the idea of becoming a commercial artist of some kind.

I absolutely hated it. I thought I’d rather die.

The next year I transferred to the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

I just wanted to draw and paint. Making a living would have to work itself out.

It was better than dying.

That said, prior to my arriving at the Art Academy, I very clearly remember that my only real imaginative desire for wanting to go there, was to be in a room with naked people, and to be able to look at them and draw them all I want.

It wasn’t a sexual thing, though it truly was intensely sensual.

Back then, I used to sit on the floor with my drawing board, directly in front of the model stand.

It was like me and the model became all that there was.

We represented everything.

Something about their being naked, their being completely exposed.

No pretentions, no labels, just who you are, honest and sincere, no bullshit.

I always feel naked.

Back then, I didn’t have any idea what was happening to me.

Just I knew I was alone, in that it wasn’t happening to anybody else I knew.

There was something about figure drawing.

It always made me feel less alone.

It was a place of trust.

It felt like being in a larger sense of home.