“…am I an exhibitionist?” Adrian In His Own Words

“I'm often asked, you know, are you an exhibitionist?” – Adrian

Mod bod art model Adrian will pose for Men Drawing Men on SUN April 11, 12-2p ET (NYC).

Tickets via Eventbrite: https://mdmapr11.eventbrite.com
Your Zoom link will be in your Eventbrite confirmation email.

Model: Adrian https://www.instagram.com/modbodadrian/
Interviewer: Shungaboy https://www.instagram.com/shungaboy/

Music: "At The Shore" Kevin MacLeod (www.incomptech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

Your Studio

Yeah. I live in an old Victorian 1880s, 1890s school building. And it was a school right up until about 30 years ago, and then it was derelict and then converted into flats. So lots of ghosts in this place. In my particular space, I'm lucky that I've got some very nice natural light. I also am lucky enough to have a mirror here, which has done me a lot of good use in the last few months which actually I didn't even pay for it because it was left out in the hallway.

Tell us about yourself

I am a gay man, but I'm slightly unusual in a way in that I also have a teenage son, but because he lives in France, unfortunately I haven't seen him since last August because of COVID, which is great sadness. One of my big hobbies actually has always been traveling. So I've been very lucky to travel many, many places around the world, including large parts of the US.

Life Modeling

I've been a life model for, well over 20 years now. I love doing what I do. I think there's no one way of doing life modeling. I think there were as many different kinds of life models that are life models. It's about just having something and presenting things to artists that can inspire them. But every model does it differently. I often am asked to do, to do stuff, which is Egon Schiele based, an early 20th century artist from Austria, very contorted and I mean, wonderful, wonderful stuff or something that's more classical like Michelangelo or Rodin.

Exhibitionist

I'm often asked, you know, are you an exhibitionist? And I would be honest and say that, yes, I am an exhibitionist. Being an exhibitionist, I think is a necessary condition to be a model, but it's not a sufficient condition.

Spatial Awareness

I think a good model has a spatial awareness that it's a 3-d awareness of how their pose projects to their audience. It's quite an innate theatrical skill. You're projecting yourself physically and almost in a weird kind of way spiritually out into that room. I see myself as actually being a shape maker and an image maker, and then artists can, can do what they want with that image and, you know, translate it into something else, morph it into something magical and wonderful.

 

Zoom Modeling

But a big shock happened to us all, didn't it? Just over a year ago now I remember I was out as I often did, working six or seven days a week, and then suddenly in the space of two or three days, the cancellations just came in like bing, bing, bing on my phone. And so virtually overnight, I had to set up operation in this old Victorian school. And that's very, very different experience obviously for you guys as artists drawing the models, but for a model it's very, very different as well. And especially cause I'm working on my own, I have to try and set up a shot, try and fill the frame, make sure the lighting's in place and all of that. And that that's quite challenging. And also, mentally I think to be a life model need to have quite a mental strength as well, because you are quite vulnerable and you have, you know, you're naked and people are looking at you and making assessments of you, you know, aesthetic ones or otherwise.