TOM MAZZULLO

FIGURES

I have a long relationship with figure drawing. The first silverpoint I ever did at Tyler was a figure study. When I was in graduate school at Syracuse University, I was lucky enough to proctor the Friday night figure drawing sessions, where I made hundreds of small silverpoint drawings and began to show other people how to do silverpoint. When I moved to Denver, I drew the model as often as I could, at the Art Students League of Denver, and, later on after I started teaching there, I would draw alongside my students in Figure Drawing. Although I rarely show them, I have drawers full of these small, quick studies.

Many of these drawings are intended to be non finito, or drawings which are purposely left incomplete. Given the few minutes I have to do a study, and the length of time it takes to complete a silverpoint drawing, working in an unfinished style is reasonable. However, for ten years I made drawings with the intention that they be unfinished, only hinting at form, or the figure, sometimes fading out of focus in much the same way our eyes truly grasp things, not all at once, but in brief glimpses assembled mentally. Part of why I do this is bound up in the idea that life drawing can be an intuitive activity rather than a decision-making process.