Q: Hello Miss Flame! What drives you to do modelling and why did you choose art nude?
Hello! Okay, this question just got me thinking so much and my answer expanded quite a bit! It’s great reflection for me though too so thank you. This is just my experience at this moment and I’m still working it all out 🙂
To be honest it was never in my head to be a model but thinking about it, when I was young I was always in a bit of a fantasy world, I wrote a lot of stories and poems, drew beautiful mermaids and princesses, and pretended I was different characters in my own imaginary movies. I went on to study art at college and university and have always pulled out pictures from fashion magazines to stick into books as I just adored the aesthetics – not just the clothes but the people, textures, shapes, colour, architecture, nature. I feel magnetised to everything eyecatching and beautiful and want to keep it for myself. Photograghy, painting, writing – all art forms capturing a story and moment in time, it is something that just feels so urgent to me and gives me so much enjoyment, so to be part of that, to be able to act out stories and emotions, dream ideas and follow inspirations, is really fulfilling.
I didn’t really choose art nude but I was drawn to it at first because I wanted to be photographed beautifully and loved the idea of being immortalised in images inspired by my favourite artworks. I think now I’ve come to see how it can also be such a pure, reflective experience… our phenominally intricate minds, deep emotions and fascinating bodies are just incredible. As an art nude model, it is like when you sometimes stop to look in a mirror at your naked body, and take a moment to really see – your shoulder blades moving across your muscles, your ribcage protecting your organs, the beat of your heart under your skin pumping blood around your body, it’s skin knitting back together over grazes, how it fights to deal with stress and illness – it is a miracle. It reminds me how mortal I am, that life is now and I won’t be around for that long. These were ideas I explored a lot in my own art projects; our place in the whole history of time, the feeling of being suspended in our own worlds, how easy it is to get so caught up in mundance stresses of life, the way modern media puts pressure to achieve the ‘perfect’ lifestyle, we can get so self obsessed and lose sight of the whole picture. So I suppose a lot of it has been an extension of my personal ‘research’ – we’re all searching for our meaning and it is great to be able to collaborate with such talented, inspiring people to do that, and hopefully it recycles. As the model I can experience and convey it, the artist captures and passes it on for the viewer to embrace and hopefully it uplifts/challenges/questions them to live with more zeal/peace/free-thinking or whatever effect it brings to them.
Of course not every art nude shoot has to be so deeply involving as all this, sometimes it is just about capturing simple beauty, playing with light, experimenting, we need to have that balance and variation. And sometimes as a job, I find modelling, even just the art nude side of it, can get very vain, you can worry what people think and compare yourself to others, like I said before; we as humans can get so self absorbed, but then there are moments that can be so powerful and memorable, and it’s the experience and lessons of those that drive me. Standing on the top of a hill surrounded by forest with open sky above as the wind blows against your bare skin and the sun shines down on your face, really brings you back to your roots, literally; we are part of the earth and we need to respect ourselves, others and nature for the time we are here and just enjoy life. That is why I love art modelling; as it strips you down so you face the world and your self, positively and honestly.
