The painting story...

When I was in undergrad, I attended a variety of schools. By the time I got serious about my education, my parents were no longer willing to foot the entire bill, and so I worked part- to full- time in my junior and senior years.

Where I lived, jobs paid the bare minimum wage. Housing was cheap, but $4.25/hour is still painful.

One day, I decided to look into the 'modeling for art classes' thing. There were many reasons: First, it was rumored to pay $10/hour. Second, posing for 10 hours/week sounded better than the equivalent 20 hours of minimum-wage labor. Third, I had body image issues. That last was fairly important: I was, at the time, 5'7" and a size 2 -- any issues I had should have come from being too thin. And actually, I was trying to put on weight at the time, but I had been very sick not long before (see #104 on the list) and weight gain wasn't working.

I think I just had some non-focused body issues... I didn't like the way I looked, even though I had lots of positive feedback. That statement could probably be made by most college-age women, yes?

Anyway, the art classes at school already had models, but I was "picked up" by a local artist. At times I would pose for him, and at times for private classes he gave in the community. These were two very different experiences... I remember dragging my friend with me to the first class and having him wait in the car while I posed. It was harder than I thought: the class expected some kind of experience posing - which I didn't have - and the length of time you had to hold poses verged on impossible. Plus, it was freezing cold.

When I posed for the artist himself, it was always slightly creepy. I did, in fact, meet his wife, and she was always nearby (but not ever in the studio). He was never anything but professional, but I think the (valid!) worries trained into me were impossible to completely get over. The artist got fairly famous for a period of time, after one of his paintings (not one of me) was banned from an exhibit.

The paintings I saw were great. I found it fascinating that I could recognize my figure in paintings, even before they were finished -- I later posed for someone doing bronze work, and had the same reaction. ("Hey! Those are my thighs!")

I got back in touch with the artist a couple years ago, and he was going to send me .pdfs of the paintings (but didn't, and I didn't follow up on it). Now that I'm thinking about it, I may try contacting him again to get those -- I suppose if there are nudes of you out there as a 19 year old, you should have one!