Most of the work in this show was produced in the course of the life drawing sessions organized by the Blank Page Gallery in Delano, Wichita.

Participating Artists

Chad Droegemeier -  I like to consider myself a multifaceted artist. I dabble in drawing, painting, hot glass, metalsmithing, stained glass, ceramics and sculpture. I am working towards my degree in art education at Friends University with a focus on sculpture, and plan on attending grad school at Fort Hays State University.

I find life drawing therapeutic. It has also enabled me to become a much better 2-D artist than I ever thought I could be. I am proud to be part of this life drawing group because we all have our own unique styles, and I look forward to our laid-back weekly Sunday meetings.

Lastly, I would just like to say how much I appreciate all our models for being so reliable and for making our life drawing experience so positive and productive.

Vernon Gilliland - After many years as a high-school biology teacher in western Kansas I moved to Wichita, where I now paint in oils and draw in my spare time. Besides the figure, one of my preoccupations as an artist is exploring society's treatment of women.

Leslie Kinder - I grew up in a family of artists. My mother was an art teacher with a masters degree in ceramics, and my father was an aeronautical engineer at Boeing who was a luthier and stone cutter in his spare time. At home, both art supplies and the freedom to create were always freely available while I was growing up. I decided on a career as a jeweler in the early 1970's and attended the Gemological Institute of America, obtaining a Graduate Gemologist's degree in 1975. I have owned and operated Melange Custom Jewelry in Delano for 25 years, and have taught metalsmithing and jewelry making at the Wichita Center for the Arts for the past ten years.

During college I took a few life drawing classes, so when the Blank Page in Delano offered a life drawing studio on Sundays I decided to pull out my old sketch pads and conté crayons and have some fun drawing again. The works in this show were mostly produced in the course of two years of life drawing sessions at the Blank Page.

Erik Kowal - As a teenager I drew and painted in oils. In 2001 I left the UK for Wichita, and about five years ago I took up my artist's materials again in life drawing classes at the Wichita Center for the Arts. Since then I have been a regular attender at the Blank Page's life drawing sessions, where my usual media are charcoal, graphite pencil and pastel. I am a self-employed copy editor / proofreader / translator. Email

ZeeAna Lynn - I have been interested in drawing the human figure my entire life. However, my artistic development began in my first year in college when I took a life drawing class and a teacher had me black out my canvas with charcoal and use my eraser as the sole tool to create a negative image. I fell in love with this idea, and I fell in love with charcoal. From then on, I have experimented with chalk pastels in colors, mixed media and textures.

When it comes to the subject matter, one of the things I like to focus on is unraveling negative stereotypes and poor self-image as they relate to women. In many of my pieces, it is very hard to tell how dark or light their skin color is. Women worry too much about their skin tone. I also work on the "fat" issue. Women have been taught their whole lives that they need to live up to certain standards of beauty. This has gotten society as a whole to think of nudity as being vulgar, embarrassing and degrading. Our women are wasting their money on wrinkle cream and weight loss pills. I want everyone to see that it doesn't matter whether you are young or old, black or white, thin or heavy, every woman is beautiful and sexy just they way they are.