I have come to an age when dignity should reign. As an elder, I should be a model of wisdom and restraint — rather than a nude model for a body painter. Whatever possessed me?
Adventure was the main attraction. How would it feel to let my body be a canvas? To be nude before an artist ― a total stranger ― for a couple of hours? To do something entirely new?
Love was also a reason. My husband and I were going to get painted together. The artist, Andy Golub, would incorporate the two of us into one unit. For a couple of hours, Mark and I would be nude against each other in a single position while Golub covered us with paint. This felt like a lovely way to celebrate our closeness. After 22 years of marriage, this would be a first!
I must admit, I was also hoping to impress (perhaps scandalize) my friends and acquaintances. I’m not physically courageous, but I try to be otherwise brave. In the cause of aging boldly, I’m often drawn to things perhaps unseemly for my age, such as the red cowboy boots I’ve taken to wearing.
So when the chance came to model for the man who more or less invented body painting as art (as opposed to body painting as ceremony and ritual), I didn’t think twice. Mark, though more conservative than I, also agreed without hesitation — as a triathlete, he has little body fat! I, older and less athletic, have a little more, but I’m OK with my old body and was pleased at the prospect of its being both the inspiration for and the actual material of art.
On a Sunday afternoon, Andy Golub arrived at our house with his dropcloths and his paints and began setting up in my study, which gets good natural light. Now 55, he’s been an artist since adolescence, but it was only when he began doing body art at 40 that he found his calling. Although he also paints on walls, on canvases, and on automobiles, Andy is best known for his public body-painting events, at which he and his assistants paint hundreds of nude people in venues like New York’s Times Square. He has also held mass events in San Francisco, Zurich and Amsterdam. This year’s New York event will take place on July 24 in Union Square.
