AdVersion
STUDENT REQUIRES PART TIME WORK
Anything legal and moral considered.
Only available during 'unsocial' hours and
occasional days. Reply Box No 662G
Box No 662G
I am an artist, painter mostly, require exceptional model
for clothed posing. Usual rate. Unsocial hours ideal.
Send age, M/F, recent photograph and phone number.
2B, Brunswick Centre, Brunswick Rd, London E15 4JJ
An artist, intensely focused, shy yet piercing eyes that blink, like an owls, slowly and deliberately as if posting colour, texture, shadow and shape to memory. Slightly dowdy in cloth, and quite possibly hygiene, hair lank, a certain pervading aroma; tardiness of appearance disguises an aggressive business manner, working time, a rate per hour, a work schedule, are negotiated and concluded without so much as a 'good evening'. The brisk manner may be shyness, or a flaw in social skills, an anxiety to commence, or just a game. The artist prowls like a caged animal.
A model, a student, nervous naturally, it is a first time posing, hesitant, groomed for approval, the grooming ignored, mildly confused, the preliminaries, you see, names neither offered, nor asked, or even spoken to, curious beyond wondrous, and stands, fidgeting.
And so to begin, with the customary awkwardness of strangers, a clipped dialogue, one straining to please, the other... just a strain, uncomfortable making demands.
"Keep still!"
A hand to chin, firm, commanding, like the dentist, twist turn, head raised - angle appraised shadowed by murmured grunts; the faint reek of oil paint and turpentine quite fails to mask a musky scent. Not wholly unpleasant.
"Hold the pose." Harsh.
Behind me, looking at what? Am I to be painted from behind? How will anyone know it's me?
Prowling again, three steps, stop, sigh; shift the shoulder alignment, looks from the side, looks from the front. Twist the chin a taut neck-stretching delineating fraction, and growls.
"Hold the pose." A request.
Now a camera, soft clicks, digital, of course. Angles, repeated, flash blinking, eyes blinking. "Don't look at me. Hold the pose." Now charcoal on paper, scratching, blowing, a different smell, cleaner somehow. Moving and drawing mumbling whispers, moving and drawing mild obscenities.
It's a mess, this place, splendid with clutter, paintings, paint a riot of colour heavy redolent tongue coating... silent.
"You don't say much."
A different glance, hair brushed from the forehead, charcoal smudged. I point with my eyes. Shrugs.
"I'm a painter."
It covers everything, but not the piquancy, and nothing.
Leaves me standing. Pulling canvases from racked shelving clearing with feet, debris, laying canvas, portraits, crowd scenes, members, costumed, coy nudes, risqué strangely hued copulations. Studies, hands, feet, eyes, and lips still glossed.
"Can I move?" Nod.
"Choose."
"What am I choosing?"
"You."
"You want me to choose a style?"
"Choose how I should paint you."
"You're the artist."
"You are the subject. Choose. You won't choose right, no one ever does."
"I don't understand the point."
"There is no "point". I will paint what you see, not what I see."
"You want me to select one of these paintings that I think represents me."
"No.
We are both wasting our time. You should go."
I shrug, near the door, a voice.
"Next Wednesday. Eight o'clock. Maybe. Less clothes."
- - - - -
ConVersion
The door is ajar, I did knock. The studio, a room, empty, and crowded. Partly cleared. A slightly raised dais. Cushioned, purple draped shiny, and around, paintings... possibly.
Possibly... photographs more like. Paintings by smell by touch by framing. Caressed not brush stroked, intimacy within oil, deep drawn plunging conscious depth. Colour sublime, clear, the painters eyes hauled to canvas, shades unnoticed, virulent hues rendered clean, unsullied, now seen, now fingertip touched, now traced.
I am here, centred. I am singly clad, my face, my clothes, my hands, my lips, my body, my hair, all cloned, the once. To my left side, a flaccid penis thicker than my leg, dusky pink, partly sheathed, purpled head intruding beyond, rippled skin sleeping. To my right side, a shaven pubis, viewed like the soft hill of the English countryside painted twice the size of my head, split, smooth shadow trailing, curving beneath, tissue nub crinkled darker skinned breaks shadows line. I crouch. Move left. The same penis, a woman's? lips as last I was here. Lipstick pink, glistening, pouting kisses. Move right, a lower view, legs slightly parted, crevice snagged creamy skin, a protruding crenulated russet nub, a beauty spot, a blemish on otherwise perfect skin dark spilling into folds of blackness.
I'm made to move, a symmetry unfolding left and right, separate acts, detached intent, mutually independent, intrinsically joined. Lipstick pink parted on purpled hue, moistened, growing. A male finger (definitely) indents female flesh, parting, and still hidden. Pink lips engulfing, erect, dark vein ridged, drawn inward on hollowed cheek. A glistening finger, the dazzling transparency of wetness, penetrating, half entered, half withdrawn, a moisture click painted to see heard crystal clear in silence. Erect, shadow cast on muscled abdomen, wet, saliva trailed ruddy engorged, ringed with vestige trace of lips pink bloom. Now almost joined, arched to receive, parted to give, strained to pour, electric. The last painting, set opposing my singularity, a climax, unmistakable, the canvas screams, fingers claw, fully penetrated leaking pearl gelled on ruby red flesh, opened, exposed to see, to smell to hear... and intimate within, and within. I'm uncomfortably with uncanvassed honesty, an unwilling voyeur feasting unsated, aroused by desire, curiosity abandoned to selfish pleasure.
"Have you decided?"
I jump, heard no footfall should have noticed the piquancy.
"I'm to choose. From these?"
"Maybe."
