The question is why?

On Saturday past, the gallery had many visitors, and I sat smack bang on the floor busy with a charcoal sketch. This attracted a few people who either made some remarks, or simply just stared. (Whether they admired the sketch and drifted off to their "happy place", or found me sitting on the floor with the sketch between my legs rather amusing, who knows?),  someone asked me why I sketch nudes? At that moment I really did'nt have an intelligent, witty answer to give him, but since then I have seriously thought about it.. so here goes:

I tried to recall the times when I painted/sketched something different, i.e. roses.  I tried the roses thing because my dear mother just loves roses - so I painted her this rose for her birhtday . She loved it of course - which I am grateful for, but the painting process itself left me empty. So I think therin lies the question to the gentleman's question - why do I like to sketch nudes?

Roses, landscapes, still life, you name them - are emotionless objects. They fill your vision for a moment, you enjoy their colour display, or smell their scent, or even touch them. But none of these objects can stir my emotions. What emotion do you see in the  picture of the rose? Not very much I suppose! The rose has no soul, does not experience any emotional turmoil, it does not know love, sadness, hate or jealousy. It does not need to wear clothes to cover itself up, to hide behind anything. The nude on the other hand, has nothing to hind behind, his or her emotions and feelings are there to see in the lines of their bodies. Sketching the nude makes me face my own emotions, and because it's an emotional experience, can become a journey of self-discovery and sometimes a healing process.

So to answer the question then: Why do I like to sketch nudes? Because it is an emotional process, not in discovering the human body (That I did in Biology class), but discovering emotions that may have been hidden, undiscovered, thrown away or purposefully tucked away in a safe place, and once the sketch is complete, that particular emotion has been rediscovered, labelled, filed and stored in the correct place!

(Oh, plus I have been a bit of a closet rebel all my life - but that is an entirely different story!)