Thank you for this lovely piece, Leslie. It resonates with a conversation I had yesterday. I was asking two friends whether figure drawing is inherently objectifying— not in a sexual way, but in the literal sense of mentally turning a body into an object in order to render it on a page. In the end, we came to a similar conclusion to yours: somehow when we simply draw what we see, we are also putting some soul or core expression of humanity onto the page. As you phrased it very beautifully here, “there is something much more interior that we can peer into as we peer at the external form. We are trying to capture what it is to be human by seeing what it looks like to be human.”
Thanks as always for this newsletter. Reading it always leaves me feeling both centered and inspired.
Thank you for this lovely piece, Leslie. It resonates with a conversation I had yesterday. I was asking two friends whether figure drawing is inherently objectifying— not in a sexual way, but in the literal sense of mentally turning a body into an object in order to render it on a page. In the end, we came to a similar conclusion to yours: somehow when we simply draw what we see, we are also putting some soul or core expression of humanity onto the page. As you phrased it very beautifully here, “there is something much more interior that we can peer into as we peer at the external form. We are trying to capture what it is to be human by seeing what it looks like to be human.”
Thanks as always for this newsletter. Reading it always leaves me feeling both centered and inspired.
I love your newsletter, too, Martha! It is so nice to participate in your adventures.