In the first of our Featured Artist series, Simon Goss talks to SPW about finding a new artistic perspective through Zoom. Simon has found that a screen has a distorting effect on perspective which has offered both interest and challenges to the artist who “likes to be faithful to the perspectives I’ve seen”.
In 2021, alongside a year-long digital exhibition programme on our dedicated Exhibition website, Swansea Printmakers, we are running a series of features on selected artist-members. This month, we talk to Simon Goss, one of the exhibitors in the current online exhibition, Drawn from Life.
Simon Goss is a figurative artist and portrait painter based in Swansea. He has been working in figurative art for 30 years, building a large body of work, mainly of life drawings from the nude, and many of which were drawn at SPW’s regular weekly life drawing groups.
Before the pandemic, Simon was drawing twice a week at Life Drawing classes in Swansea, so lockdown and COVID-19 restrictions threatened to leave a large gap in his artistic practice.
Like many people in the pandemic, Simon started to use Zoom to connect remotely and he became curious about this new way of seeing others: “their distracted glances, their slightly haunted expressions” as they interacted with a layer of technology between them and their co-attendees.
He undertook a project of Online Portraits involving 21 sitters over 19 paintings (two were doubles) which would record and reflect an aspect of this time and began to adapt his drawing style to work virtually.
His process for portraits, which developed over 2020, involves making drawings and taking screenshots of the sitter during a conversation. He then reviews these before beginning a painting which often captures the sitters in an animated moment, perhaps facing away, or with their gaze averted.
Simon has found that a screen has a distorting effect on perspective which has offered both interest and challenges to the artist who “likes to be faithful to the perspectives I’ve seen”.
Something which surprised Simon was his new interest in the background behind the sitters. Before using Zoom, he was “not the least interested visually [in the backgrounds] but these became part of the appeal”: the curtains which cast colour onto the skin of one sitter, the fortuitous framing of another’s head by the angle formed between the underside of the staircase and a wall.
Simon has also been adapting his drawing style when drawing from nude virtually.
Over 2020, life drawing sessions with professional models via Zoom have grown hugely in number and popularity and are now being offered around the world, a reflection of the global nature of the pandemic.
Again, Simon has found the screen can create some distortion and “while it may do some of the work of softening the image, the artist often has a much closer view of the model than they might in a studio.” With different camera angles and some models’ use of mobile phones, the artist can be presented with the challenge of more unusual and original poses and perspectives. Simon has modified the way he draws in the sense that he “measures less and trusts his eye more”. With online life sessions the poses tend to be shorter, the longest being 15-20 minutes. “This leaves less time for the analytical comparison and measurement techniques I previously employed and I have become more comfortable with just trusting my judgement.”
The growing global virtual life drawing community is one which Simon has welcomed during the pandemic and feels it will continue to have a place in the artistic world once the restrictions ease, not least because it offers such flexible access to artists as well as an income for models.
It has meant that during the pandemic Simon can often find a session to join at short notice and to fit around his schedule. He has also been working on commissions with sitters from across the world and, far from a gap in his practice, he has filled 10 sketchbooks in just one year.
A selection of Simon Goss’s life drawing work is showing in our Drawn from Life exhibition. More of his work, including his Online Portraits and Zoom Nudes can be seen on his website where you will also find information on how to contact him to discuss a commission or to buy work.
As an organization, Swansea Print Workshop has always been committed to supporting drawing as well as printmaking. Drawn from Life celebrates an incredible 22 years of regular Life Drawing classes at SPW, made possible by the dedication of volunteer organizers and tutors and the passion for drawing from life amongst our artist members.
Drawn from Life runs until the end of January. It features over 200 drawings from artists; many of the drawings have not been exhibited before.
The weekly Life Drawing group and programme of classes at SPW will resume once it is safe to do so. Up to date news will be posted on Swansea Print Workshop website and you can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.