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Both Sides Now

Hour 1

I am sitting on a tiny, three-legged stool, trying not to think of the throbbing pain. There are two more hours to go. The sound of classical music and the memory of how much fun it is to sit on the other side of the canvas make this moment tolerable.

I am for the first time on this side of the canvas, posing for a painter.

I feel like some strange specimen as I stare ahead at a fleck of paint on the back of the canvas. Just me and the fleck of paint. Every muscle in my back is slightly tense as I hold the prescribed posture. My cheek muscles quiver while I try to hold a sincere smile across my face. Who knew it could be so hard?

Hour 2

As if the burning sun has set and a cool moon has risen, I have become comfortable. My body relaxes. But soon my vision starts to blur around the periphery, and I give my head a shake to regain focus. Accented English floats up over the canvas and asks me to straighten my head. Immediately, I begin to worry that I’m a terrible model. Maybe she won’t want to finish the portrait. Maybe she’ll find someone else. Why is it so hard to sit still?

We break for five minutes, and my mind is put to rest when she tells me that I am one of the best sitters she’s ever had. She’s attracted, she says, to the emotions she sees in my eyes. I secretly wonder if one of those emotions is the pain in my backside, but of course I’m flattered.

Hour 3

The last hour becomes a meditation as my mind empties. I try to set my thoughts adrift, like a paper boat on a pond, but always, the waves of discomfort in my legs bring them back to my body. I find a peace in this awareness, though, and in my calmness I observe my surroundings.

The studio is ethereal. Windowless white walls, glass roof, bare wood floors. Jars of paintbrushes on a white marble table. Two stools – one for her, one for me. An easel. Paint spatters on the floor provide the only decoration, and in them I have seen countless constellations.

What seems like a bland room is actually itself a canvas for the light coming through the glass roof. It was only this morning, after weeks of sitting, that I began to see the vibrations of color, of blue and orange, that line objects in the room. I cautiously explained this to her during our break, and she laughed as a master does when a pupil has finally grasped something.

The three hours are up. I step out of the studio into the brisk London air, squint at the clouds and begin my walk home.

Since arriving in London a month ago, this has been my job. My plan had been to spend the winter studying in the city’s art museums and painting on my own, but curiosity and an overwhelming exchange rate led me to answer an ad in the library by an artist looking for a model. This led me to the three-legged stool in Catherine de Moncan’s studio, where, for three hours every morning, I sit as still as possible.

Catherine, who signs her work, Moncan, is French. In the 1960s she studied under ةdouard Mac’Avoy at the Académie Julian in Paris, where she showed great artistic promise. Her drawing of a nude figure won that school’s Grand Prix in her first year, and in the years following her graduation her oil paintings claimed several other noteworthy prizes in Paris, including the Prix ةmile Bernard and the Grand Prix de la Seine et du Parisis.

Her talents are not limited to the canvas, though, and after illustrating Marcel Proust’s novel, Combray, in the 1970s, Catherine put down her paints to write. She wrote novels for some twenty years, moved to London and, in the late nineties began to paint again.

Even in her twenties, Catherine painted human figures with the aid of models. These early paintings often distorted a body’s proportions – elongating fingers, stretching torsos – with effects that lent a beautiful sense of motion and imagination to her canvases.

Since taking up her brushes again, Catherine has developed a style that follows more faithfully her models’ features and expressions. It is a more classic style of portraiture, and one, that with an infinite amount of small, different-colored brush strokes, shows the influence that Impressionism has on her work. In fact, some of her earliest experiences with art came from her grandparents, whose Impressionistic paintings filled the house of her childhood. Today, she cites Cezanne, Rembrandt and Velasquez as particular inspirations.

Over the past month, through an accumulation of five-minute breaks during the painting sessions, Catherine and I have become friends. Her work has inspired me in my own painting, and she has invited me to paint alongside her when she begins her next portrait in a few weeks. I am extremely lucky to have found a mentor at the same time as I did a job, and the opportunity to paint alongside such an accomplished artist will surely be one of the highlights of my winter in London.

Catherine is nearly finished painting me, and in a few days I will cease to be model and will begin work as a cheesemonger in the busy Borough Market. In the meantime I’ll continue to sit through the painful and peaceful moments, dreaming of my return to the other side of the canvas.