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Fear

(highlighted detail of figure image below)

Colored-pencil drawing

Male nude figure

Colored pencils on white acid-free paper

January 2004

Dimensions: paper 11 inches high by 14 inches wide; image about 6-3/8 inches high by about 9-1/2 inches wide

A strong young man seems to cower alone, shielding his head with his hands and arms, burrowing himself into an ominously shaded crevice. Male nude figures are rarely the subject of my drawings, and the masculinity and muscularity of the figure makes the drawing all the more interesting, as it undermines assumptions that fear comes less to men than to women, less to the strong than to the weak.

Fear is an adaptation of the strikingly beautiful photograph "Adam Est Rêve" with the kind permission of the photographer Richard Forster of Geneva, Switzerland. (To see more of Mr Forster's excellent photographs, go to any of these websites: www.sgp-geneve.ch, www.photoexpo.ch, www.photoexpo.net, www.aktgalerie.de, www.aktpaare.de, and www.shedworks.de)

As I lightly drew what are gray boulders in the original Forster photograph, I decided to make the surrounding landscape a more emotionally chilling one of glacial ice, because fear can freeze and trap anyone in indecision and lonliness.

Fear, like another male nude drawing of mine, Lost at Sea, compellingly captures a primal human emotion.

Go back to see more drawings and paintings in the Figures gallery