Three artists show figure studies

Press, 26 May 1977, Page 13

Three artists show figure studies

MICHAEL THOMAS

Three different approaches to the traditional artistic exercise — the life study — are shown in the exhibition of drawings and water colours by Doris Lusk, Don Peebles and William Sutton at the C.S.A. Gallery until May 30.

William Sutton’s drawings are fluent and accomplished. Limbs are foreshortened and figures drawn with a style and grace reminiscent of the Italian High Rennaissance. A swift line conveys the subtleties and curves of the human anatomy with freedom and authority. In spite of their technical' excellence, however, the drawings lack a certain challenge. They are exercises in a technique which has already been mastered. The figures — or parts on them — are always seen

in isolation; never are they related to their surroundings or is the form of the body considered as a total entity occupying space. Fluid and free, the water colours by Doris Lusk make full use of the effects of paint on paper. The most exhilarating studies are those which appear to be a spontaneous reaction to the sitter. The three pencil sketches in No. 7, which seem to have been drawn at high speed, catch the “taught” attitude of the pose. In the more laboured pieces accents of dark pencil spoil the assurance and “general” handling of the media. A feeling for the form of the figure is present in all the studies by Doris Lusk, and the works are expressions of feeling and aesthetic effect, rather than exercises in perceptual analysis. Don Peebles is the only artist of the three who show’s studies of the figure in relation to the envi-

ronment. The model is seen as part of a total whole where all the shapes, textures, and apparently chance marks are considered. Many of the smallest works have been, conceived as “abstracts” in which the balance of the elements in the composition is more important than the actual proportions of the figures in real life. The extremely cursary sketches of heads are too brief to make a significant statement, and do not have the spatial depth and interest of the more resolved “environmental” pieces.