“Figure work symbolizes my sense of the human condition, the human energy. We answer for what we are as energy. The subject matter suits me; it’s more poetic; it’s the dance. I see great grace in the figure and its place as an energy in existence … it indicates all aspects of being from the known to the unknown, from form to no form.”[1]
These images were drawn over a period of several years and are not representational drawings but portraits or translations of models posing, waiting in time. Dismissing the realism of a purposefully designed scene Alan creates an atmosphere where the space the models occupy belongs to a metaphysical world.
As models they pose, or it could be said they are poseurs with a need to be seen. The banality of strutting the catwalk, the posing with blank but beautiful faces undergoes an atmospheric transformation as personalities emerge by an abstract gesture, stroke or nuanced attenuation of limb or line, they become alive and expressive and the models’ clothes consciousness is elevated from the material world to a space where they, in different disguises along with everyone else, wait in time.
Alan’s drawing of life models and his portraiture was grounded in classical practice and developed into his own baroque expressionism. His technique and manner of application is fluent, suggestive of spontaneous energy and movement yet which may also be poised and elegant in response to the psyche he portrays.
[1]Alan Pearson quoted in “Figurework: The nude and life modeling in New Zealand art” by Sandra Chesterman, Otago University Press, 2002.
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