Much 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, from early 2008 to date.

Participating Artists

Cindy Craig - I was born in Wheeling, WV and grew up in the small town of Mt. Pleasant, OH. I have been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. At Ohio University I took courses in life drawing and fell in love with drawing the figure.

After earning a Bachelors degree, I moved to Emporia, KS where I earned Masters degrees in Art Therapy and Library Science. I am pursuing a career in librarianship, but still enjoy drawing in my spare time. I have worked in watercolor, oils, ink, and pastels, but my preferred medium is charcoal. This is my second show. Email

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.

Bill Groce - Age 61. Student of Charlotte Martin. Hobbies: International travel, amateur photography

"Most of my pieces are either completed from pictures taken during my travels or created during live model sessions at local studios. I really like oil as a medium and am growing in my appreciation of the versitility of other less fluid media.

I come from a family of artists: my great-grandmother and mother were both wonderful artists, and I inherited beautiful oil paintings and watercolors done by each of them. Their influence on my own creative efforts is evident, even though in my works I prefer the human form and life situations involving people doing what they do in their daily routine. I like to capture a moment that shows an expression of the subject's life in my art.

From early on I was discouraged by teachers and others who said that I would not be able to paint because I am deficient in my color perception (I'm mostly red/green color blind). It was enough to cause me to fail art class in school: I just could not reproduce those color washes. Then about nine years ago - 42 years later - I decided to just go ahead and try. While color may need an interpretive effort on my part, now I find that my focus on value is a great advantage in the creative process.

With my oils, the most intimidating part is just getting started, finding a subject and getting some paint on the canvas. I enjoy my growing creativity and feel that I am learning to create works with a broad range of topic, feeling and depth."   Email  Tel: 316-832-4393                   

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 Gemmological Institute of America, obtaining a Graduate Gemmologist'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

Ronny Quist - 1670 was the year, I recall - April 1st, of course - I don't know, it's just something I vaguely recollect. I can't say for sure. It was Bombay during a monsoon: my parents, Albert Einstein and Queen Ulfhild Håkansdotter of Sweden, sold me to a sideshow promoter. The rest is herstory.