traumatic drawing

Who or what makes you want to draw

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raison
Newbie Crawler
Newbie Crawler
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun May 13, 2007 3:11 am
Location: coastside: california

traumatic drawing

Post by raison »

Cober still has a great influence on me. I still miss him deeply. The loss still seems profound. I miss talking about everything and anything for hours with him and all the while sketching.

I wrote this about an experience in his class. I smile now, thinking of the look he gave me when I told him of my conversation with Dr. Deadbody prior to this class.
* _ *

The first dead body I see doesn't have feet or a spine. Medical students removed them, none of us really know why. Its dried, mealy flesh spills out onto the table from deep slits cut in the armpits, like crumbled pieces of clay. The skin is slightly gray and has a blue translucent glow, magnified by the fluorescent lighting. I stand transfixed, staring at this corpse and trying to ignore the smell.

I understand why we're here for this assignment: to draw by seeing. I am watching my classmates. There are only three of us around this body. The genitals are concealed with a white sheet. My other classmates are peering at the jars of malformed babies and abnormal body parts. No one is approaching the row of bodies near the door, five in total, each covered with a white cloth. I ask the man in the white coat if we could draw them too and he becomes visibly disturbed. Just one is enough, he says, and feels compelled to add that he can't understand why we'd want to draw them in the first place. Kind of an odd reaction, considering us ghoulish, coming from a man who works among the dead every day.


I still don't know if it's a man or a woman. Deb lifts up the sheet and declares it's a woman. I didn't want to look at first, but soon I'm studying her intensely as I draw. Her breasts have slid to her sides, her nipples lost in a landslide of sagging, lifeless flesh. Her nose is flat and deeply creased where it has collapsed back onto her forehead. I try to see her as an object but the odor is really getting to me. I must stay objective. I observe her as a subject, though part of me wants to see her as human, I fight that urge. I cannot picture her as a lady walking down the street, buying a muffin at a bake sale or sitting on a bus.


Deb thinks this is fascinating and decides she'll donate her body to science. I do a few drawings in my sketchbook and watch as the man in the white coat unscrews two jars and removes a pair of heads. Basketheads. Their skulls have been cut away on either side, leaving a long, curved strip on top. One skull still has some flesh and hair, a crewcut. Both skulls are empty. The man in the white coat grabs the basketheads by their handles, places them on a tray for us to draw, rips off his gloves and leaves the room again.

I keep seeing the pieces of muscle and tissue spilling out of her armpits when I close my eyes, and realize it will take some time before I get these images out of my head. Even the smells linger, but all jumbled up, the pungent smell of formaldehyde and embalming fluids mixed with the perfumes and other scents from my classmates. The smell of the dead and the living together in one room. My memory of the smells make it difficult for me to eat.

I feel like I am looking at things differently now, more directly. The after-images and smells are disturbing. It has also given me a good lesson in seeing; no matter what your subject, look objectively and draw as if it is your first time.

Image
We are living in a time when civilization has become highly expert in the art of destroying human beings and increasingly weak in its power to bring meaning to their lives. --Ben Shahn

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