Of course, you already know you're not alike with anyone.
I know that you're not.
We had together for two months,
for a couple months then.
And haven't seen you like that for a short time?
What inspired me to start the drawing room is quite a difficult question to answer.
I was a recently retired art teacher and I was looking to do some more life drawing
classes and I didn't really want to go to the usual big empty spaces where people stand
around and the model comes in usually shivering with cold and stands on a
podium, no one speaks, there's no music and the rooms are generally very spartan
and lit really highly. There's not a lot of conversation that goes on. I'd spent a
lot of time in my life doing life drawing classes and actually running some
as well and I thought that was what I didn't want to go to. I looked around
Newcastle and couldn't find anything to go to. I actually went to Sydney and
found something vaguely that I would like to go to and I went but I found it
was a little bit burlesque for me. I quite like the burlesque but I thought
if it was burlesque every night I would just get a little bit sick of it. I
started thinking well if I can't find something like this in Newcastle I started
thinking maybe because Newcastle is such a creative city and I knew so many
actors and dancers and performers and poets and interesting people. I thought
maybe we could have some performance dance as well as some burlesque and tap
into Newcastle's creative talent. I talked to quite a few people, I talked to
people about whether they might be interested in coming to such a place
and what they would want in such a place. They had some similar ideas to me. My
ideas were somewhere very pleasant to go to, somewhere where you wouldn't feel as
though you were being judged, somewhere that was accepting, somewhere that was
friendly and welcoming, maybe you could sit down, maybe you could have a cup of
coffee, maybe you could have a glass of wine, maybe there would be music and the
models would be local and people who not necessarily are professional models but
people who know about performance and where their bodies are in space. It's
always been a big part of my life. I've painted and drawn since I was a really
small girl. I've spent a lot of my adult years painting but life drawing has been
something that I shied away from. I saw an ad in the paper, the Newcastle Herald
about the drawing room and it sounded so exciting that it actually inspired me
to pick up my pencil and come in here and try to do life drawing and it's been
brilliant. The fantastic part about here is the atmosphere is so relaxed,
everybody is so much fun. The models, the different ambience every week, a
different genre of model, that's so exciting. Since coming here to the
drawing room my drawing style has improved greatly. I've spent so much time
focusing on hands and feet and I really look forward to every Tuesday night.
The drawing room sometimes for me can be frustrating. I work in a
pretty complex human service area and when I get away from it it's hard just
to turn off and to explore the other the other creative side and I think that
coming here I can spend an hour an hour and a half here sometimes being
frustrated thinking I'm not released I'm not getting that sort of expression
that I would like and then something clicks during the night and usually
Annie will say look use the pastels just relax with it and encourages a technique
that I guess I'm becoming more comfortable with so that helps me just to
explore and to let go a bit of the work or the other aspects of life and I
quite enjoy that. People are always asking me where I get my models from
because the drawing room has been going now for over 18 months and the models
are what people mainly talk about the exceptional quality of the performances
the exceptional generosity of the models that come and stand for us.
When I first started out it was really quite difficult. So I went to John
Campbell at Circus Avalon and he was very very accommodating and gave me the
name of quite a few young circus performers who could juggle a contort
whirl twirl leap and stretch in costume to whatever I wanted. So they have become
part of a solid core of performance models that I use a lot and they are
very enthusiastic they know exactly where their bodies are in space they know
exactly how they appear they're very safe and they're very physical. So we have
Caravaggio knights with patch who can hold a pose for hold a beautiful
exaggerated pose for longer and stiller than I've ever seen anyone do before. I
came into contact with a performance artist who was also a choreographer she
said she was about to head to Melbourne which happens and but she put me in
touch with her with her group and it was called senior piggy wiggies love lawn
theatre. I have since employed many people from the love lawn they are
youthful they are up for anything and they have developed their own characters
quite beautifully to the point where we have Alex Martin who comes and we never
quite know what Alex is going to come it's quite difficult to organise slides
and music for Alex because he does surprise us sometimes. Also from the
love lawn theatre we have we've employed the lovely Jesse Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson the white feather dancer she arrived in the self-made white
feather two-piece bikini with the feather headdress the long white gloves
the stilettos in full makeup with burlesque tunes showing and a lovely
slideshow of Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge images in the background she was
an absolute show stealer to start with and still is so we have Jesse back
regularly we also have the most beautiful love lawn person Anna Ringma who is
also a professional actress and Anna is beautifully active model she will move
into quite extreme poses and stay in them with poise she dresses as a
little French dancer and sometimes another times comes as a little French
sailor but she's always has a sense of liveliness and life to her
performance poses we also have danger boy has posed for us he didn't bring
his bed of nails but he did come with multiple piercings his self-made wardrobe
and a six-inch nail that one of our artists had to hammer through his
sinus passages which was another performance special for the artist
coming to the drawing room I was thinking wasn't sure whether I'd be
good enough to join and I had a look on the internet and saw the pictures and saw
that the people were relaxed and having a good time so I thought I think I can
give that a go so I came along sat up in the back corner and gradually I've
moved down the front now as I think my drawings have got better you're not sure
each time what sort of model you're going to get so it's a bit of an adventure
maybe it'll be a glamorous the luxurious model maybe it'll be a bit of a
he-man maybe it'll be somebody really quirky like Alex in his wallaby suit
it's it's always a bit surprising and exciting to see who'll be there but
often the models also exude a real spirituality and peacefulness and so
coming to the drawing room and concentrating on the models and
concentrating on that piece is is also quite good for the soul I get a lot
out of the drawing room it's a chance to be something different other than what
I am in my normal life so I have a very busy professional life I work for the
University and this is a chance to be somebody else and something else and
in fact one of the nice things about the drawing room is that people just come
and draw so the first thing you do is come and draw and concentrate on just a
whole different world and a whole different group of people and whole
different lot of values the strongest performance I've seen recently was from
Thomas another of the performance artists from the Lovelawn Theatre Thomas has
spent sometimes some time in Istanbul he came as a as a person who had been a
professional life model but he'd also studied Sufi poetry and Sufism so he
came in a Sufi costume and did some of the Sufi whirling forest and the artists
were drawing and with their with their mouths open and jaws dropping he was
absolutely enchanting he then went into a contemplative pose and was reciting
some of his poetry and then he would still in a really peaceful almost
trance-like state and that was that's a perfect example of how we can use local
performance artists as art models we've also just recently attracted well we
have we've attracted a quite a quite a local famous person by the name of Afro
Moses we had the most fabulous night where he was playing his instrument and
then going in pose and then dancing and stealing into pose changing costumes and
he generously bought all his CDs with him so we could play those so we could
listen to all his wonderful contemporary reggae stuff and enjoy drawing such a
charismatic person he also explained to us his philosophy on life which was
really quite lovely he shared a lot of stuff with us he was really happy to be
given one of Steve Stephen generously gave him one of his drawings later on
I was told by someone that Afro Moses is the Elvis of Ghana okay so I've been
drawing in left drawing classes for five years so I was really interested in
finding out what it was like being on the other side so being a model so I got
into contact with and when I heard about the drawing room and I was her first
model I like it that says wine and music and the background images it's just
like a whole different atmosphere my favorite thing about modeling would
definitely have to be thinking of new poses especially the gestural ones which
have to be really expressive and like large I I love modeling because I love
being the center of attention and the artists work are always so different I
just like seeing the different interpretations modeling like holding
poses I've done 40-minute poses and it gets very it does get pretty fancy you
have to be pretty fit to do it I think in the last six months we have had through
word-of-mouth some approaches by a couple of ballerinas we had the most
fabulous Daga night Brianna was just beautiful and she came with a Don Giovanni
costume to do as she was the most graceful beautiful ballerina and she
knew instinctively how to pose for us artists very happy pastel chalk flying
everywhere Daga slides up in the background and French classical music
what more could you want I enjoy coming on a meeting other people it's actually
what I'd call a heavenly experience because the models are entertaining
they're always different and diverse the people who come along are all of the
same idea I've met many of my friends from the drawing room because we just
have common interest I guess well hello there my name is Dean winter I'm the
owner of the Royal Exchange this establishment it's a small arts theater
basically in Newcastle it's a home to a lot of different sorts of things like
performance principally but also cabaret jazz music art house movies many
concerts I call them selling concerts it's a bit derivative of my experiences
in Europe in the 90s where I found there was a lot of small venues that were
opening that were doing very interesting shows and Australia didn't seem to have
anything equivalent and when I came back here I thought I could do this I have the
drawing room fits in very well with what we're doing here because it's a life
drawing class that wants to do burlesque and performance based drawing
drawing lessons and sessions so I am very very happy to have the drawing
room here as part of the events that happen here it fits in very well with
what my intents are and continue to be for this place and for Newcastle well I
first came across the drawing room several months ago when I was on my way
to a jazz gig at the Grand Hotel and I was walking past and I saw a sign at
the front talking about music and wine and art and I thought I'd take a look and
I wandered up and there was a good lady sitting on a chair and a few people
around drawing her and I felt immediately a little bit uncomfortable
because I was hoping I might be able to play some trumpet but I was invited in
by Anne very graciously and sat down and proceeded to play a little bit of trumpet
there's music going all the time and I basically just play along with whatever's
going occasionally I'll do a few solo pieces sometimes I don't do anything at
all the sort of things I get out of the drawing room it's really like an art
history lesson for me every week every week there's a different model there's a
different theme I think it's quite a lot of fun actually to come and just play
a little bit of music in the background and I think people seem to enjoy it the
original drawing of how I visualized what my little enterprise will be is on
the postcard for the drawing room it's now the image that the drawing room uses
because it's how I saw it how I wanted it to be and honestly I cannot say it is
any different to that it's better it's it has become that vision a very
welcoming generous sharing space where a huge variety of people from many
different backgrounds from many ages all types of creative abilities just come
and enjoy themselves with art as the common denominator art and drawing as
the common denominator and I've got to say I've never had more fun in the life
it's like reaching for the moon
