Bill Tomlinson - "So Why Nudes?"

So, Why Nudes?

To me, the subject matter that is at once the most beautiful, the most expressive and the most compelling is ourselves -- people – and although I have occasionally ventured into other areas, my primary interest for as long as I have been drawing has been the human figure, whether clothed or nude.
I have been asked more than once, “Why nudes?”. It's a legitimate question. After all, why not draw people the way we see them every day as they go about their business all around us – clothed?
To begin with, like most artists, I am interested in getting beyond the superficial to the essential reality of things. Clothing is an expression of who we are in our various roles in life, whether we're a lawyer, a cook or a hobo, but there is a more essential humanity common to us all, and artists for the past two and a half millennia have attempted to portray and express this humanity with the nude.
For me, no matter whether a nude is expressing sexuality, mortality, suffering or joy, there is an essential beauty that is – or should be -- common to all of them, and my hope is to give a sense of that beauty in my drawings and paintings.

Contributed by Bill Tomlinson
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Bill's works can be seen in the Side Street Gallery in Wellington, On.  Please click here.

Bill Tomlinson on Figurative Drawing

This picture seems to me to point the way to where I would like to take my work generally, whether in charcoal, pastel, or paint. 

I’m interested in the tension between the medium on the one hand -- in this case charcoal and pastel on paper --  and the representational image on the other; so here the fading of the image into mere paper on the right side, or the seemingly capricious patch of red at the bottom, or the minimal treatment of the feet in contrast with the more developed arm and slip; all emphasize the tension between the kneeling figure and the colours, textures and lines that give her form. It’s as if this figure might dissolve at any moment into its constituent elements, and that, to me, is a fascinating and effective metaphor for a corresponding tension between being and non-being, our central spiritual issue as mature human beings.

Having said all that, I have to add simply that I love arrangements of lines, colours, textures and so on for their own expressive sake, and would spend time looking at them and making them even if they didn’t (as they often don’t in wonderful pieces by other artists) add up to a recognizable representation of something.


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