Editor:
It is worth pointing out that some of our senior artists in the Sechelt life drawing group are themselves grandmothers whose families have grown up and are now getting back to their artistic practice.
The three monotheistic religions have taught their followers to cover up and fear the corporal self, while artists over the centuries have struggled to depict the exquisite arrangement of anatomical forms we call Homo sapiens, one of the great triumphs of human mammalian evolution.
Furthermore it should be obvious that only a small handful of deeply repressed persons would be willing to transfer their primitive anxieties onto the children participating in the Festival of the Performing Arts. Clearly they would never be adversely affected by some charcoal drawings on the walls of a public art gallery when they can effortlessly access the most explicit sexual images on their computer or tablet.
The drawn studies in the life drawing show are absolutely not sexual in nature – quite the contrary – and to consider them as such reveals an absurd and disturbing psychopathology that harkens back to the dark ages, when “authority” told us in no uncertain terms that the human body was disgusting, dangerous and sinful and would lead straight to hell.
Let us celebrate the art of the body and the opposable thumb that allows children to make glorious music.
M. Spira, Roberts Creek
