Posing Nude
Going Through Old Notebooks Part 36: "You could make about a hundred dollars in three hours, just by standing there."
I am a writer, but once upon a time I was also an artist. I studied painting as an undergraduate, and maintained some form of modest studio practice until I was in my early thirties. Sometimes all that meant was that a corner of my bedroom or apartment was devoted to canvases and glass palettes, their edges blunted by masking tape. Newspapers or drop cloths were spread across the floor. For a long time there was always a pair of jeans ruined by slashes of gesso and careless daubs of color, the places where I wiped my palette knife, hanging on a hook. There was the mineral smell of pigments, cobalts and cadmiums, and the lintseeds and turpentines I used to thin them, an eau de studio which clung to my winter coats.
