Lisa Urban

Figure drawing for me is about movement and emotion. The marks a person is able to make with a brush or pencil play a huge role in how the viewer perceives the work. My drawings are an exploration of these marks paired with spontaneous emotion that occurs when I attend my local figure drawing group.

Each drawing is a representation of the night it was created. Starting with the quick studies, I allow my brush to create a ground plain that then dictates the rest of my drawing.  As each model and each pose is unique, I find that I often have to pick and chose what will end up on my paper and how the different parts will interact as a whole. While the longer poses are meant to be more detailed, I often find that I enjoy playing with what can become of the shorter ones.  I start to turn the quick lines from earlier in the evening into bits of landscape that serve as a space for my longer drawings to rest and in doing so I begin to create a “figurative dreamscape”.  With all of the elements playing with each other in harmonious way, the viewer is led to believe that the forms exist in a world of their own, surrounded by nothing more than fading dreams.