nic-rad:

Oh, just a video of man and a woman having a serious discussion about anuses. (This is probably NSFW.)

Painter Craig Drennen describes his ‘well rendered anuses’ as unheroic portraiture. 

When I had Drennen as a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, he wasn’t painting them just yet. But he was focused and provocative- while most of his students were just trying to keep from getting our privileged egos dirty, or alternatively trying to show just how dirty we could be. Pathetic, all of it.

Drennen was a beacon of casual sophistication in a sea of raucous self styling.

During life drawing sessions he often played a mix tape that had 15 back to back renditions of “Satisfaction.” This crescendoed in the candysexelectrovox Britney Spears version. It was funny, but also a litmus test for the all important after class peer judged conversation. The Spears disaster was only just boiling, relevant. Drennen had subtly inserted a definitive wtf among an otherwise dutifully stoic drawing curriculum.

The moderated seriousness of the whole operation was crucial.  We were entering the grand tradition of staring intently at stranger’s naked bodies and trying to see something other than tits and ass and cock. It ain’t easy, kiddo.

The trick was to get your hands involved. Drawing as an act of conscious and willful interpretation. There was a lot to take in- I remember the beads of peculiarly southern gothic sweat forming on the models’ thighs. I remember one model named Anthony who had mastered the strategic flick, a method devised to keep his anatomy at a favorable proportion. There was also the sweet stink of sagging flesh, stale perfume and deodorant, sometimes raw glandular human wreak—I offer Lucian Freud as an artist who draws remarkably well from the nose.

Much credit and respect to professors like Craig Drennen. It wasn’t long before staring into the crevices was second nature. Truly an impressive feat when it had started out as our first nature.