Tricia Rose Burt - How To Draw A Nekkid Man

 

Where I grew up in the South, there was a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. And the right way was to do what your family and society thought you should do, and the wrong way was to do something different. [audience chuckles] By age 30, I'd done most everything I was supposed to do. I'd overachieved in high school, I attended a prestigious college in the South, I had a good job, and I'd married well within the childbearing age. We'd married at my insistence, of course. But neither one of us was fully on board. So, except for moving up north to Boston, which caused my family to collectively take to their beds, I was on track with what we thought my life should look like. But I wasn't happy and I thought it was my career.

 

In my family, I was expected to go into business. I'd been in public relations for seven years, but I didn't like the work anymore. I mean, I was good at it, but I was tired of working with clients, and plus I was working with companies like retail banking, traffic reporting, hazardous waste recycling. Nothing that really blew my skirt up. [audience chuckles] So, I quit my full-time job and I started consulting, and I started taking classes to figure out what else I could do for a living. Now, the only criterion for the classes was that the instructors and students could not know or care what the Financial Times was. I took needlepoint, directing, French. I found this brochure for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and I thought, “Oh, well, this looks interesting.”

 

I went to the school, and I talked to the continuing education director, and I asked him which class he thought I should take. And he said, "You need to take Art as Process. We take burnout executives in that class all the time." [audience chuckles] I sign up. It's my first day of art school. I do my best to look artsy, to fit in. [audience chuckles] But even though I am not wearing pearls, they are still emblazoned on my chest. [audience laughter] And our instructor, Rhoda, introduces herself, and she says, "There is no right way to make art, and there is no wrong way to make art." 

 

Now, this makes me extremely nervous, [audience chuckles] because I have been raised that there is a right way and a wrong way to do most everything. [audience chuckles] And then, she says, “The class will focus on process, the process of art-making, not the end result.” Now, this makes me even more nervous, because I have been raised to focus on results. And not just any results, but the best results. And there are no grades. Things careen out of control. [audience laughter] If there are no grades, how will I know if I'm overachieving? [audience laughter] I need to know that I'm overachieving. [audience laughter] 

 

We start with the basics. And in my entire life, I have never held a stick of charcoal in my hand, and it feels good. I survived the first week of simple art exercises, and I enjoy myself. And the next week, Bob, one of the three instructors, says, "Today, we're going to do gesture drawings. Very fast drawings, about 45-second poses. We're going to draw the energy and the movement and the essence of the figure." And I am thinking, “What the heck is essence, and how the heck do you draw it?” And a man, the artist model, starts to undress. And I say, “Well, that's okay. You've seen a naked man before. You've even had sex with a naked man before. [audience chuckles] Your problem is you don't know how to draw this naked man's essence.” [audience laughter] 

 

Everybody else apparently does know how to draw his essence, as they're all busily getting out their easels and knowingly getting out sheets of paper and charcoal and other drawing mediums with which they excel. I'm just standing there like the proverbial deer in headlights, and I begin to watch and imitate because I am clueless, but competitive. [audience laughter] And so, I asked Judy, who is standing next to me and also a mature student, I say, "Judy, what are these supposed to look like? Because of course, I think there's only one right way to do this, and we're all going to draw the same image.” She looks at me bewildered and says, "They're all going to look different." I'm paralyzed. What is mine supposed to look like? Can't I just do a slide presentation for your board of directors, maybe conduct a communications audit, assess your customer service capabilities? These are things I know how to do, things in which I excel and I like to excel. And there is no way I'm going to excel drawing this naked man's essence. [audience chuckles] 

 

And I'm about to cry. And then, the competitive side of me kicks in and says, “Well, just snap out of it, you big wimp, and do something.” So, I start making these hopeless stick figures every 45 seconds, because that's how fast the poses are, every 45 seconds. And every 45 seconds, I feel like a total failure, which is a lot of times in one hour, [audience laughter] it's 80. [audience laughter] And the shame is enormous. I'm mortified at how inept I am, and I'm beating myself up for ever trying anything different, for even attempting anything new. I'm in literal physical pain. I am so far out of my comfort level. I mean, I actually hurt. I'm about to cry again, and that's when Bob comes over and shows me what amazing teachers can do. I don't even know what he says.

 

All I know is he talks me off the ledge, and breaks the vise grip that has a hold of me, and I start to draw. At the end of class, Bob picks one of my gesture drawings to put up on the wall with a bunch of other student drawings, so we can discuss them. No one laughs at me or my drawing. It actually holds its own. I have drawn a naked man, [audience chuckles] and I feel like I can do anything. But things at home start to get a little tricky. My husband is an art director. One of the reasons why I married him. I loved being with somebody artsy. He seemed so exotic and interesting. He was the creative one, and I was the business one. But when I started going to art school, all the roles were off, the balance of power completely out of sync. 

 

So, class continues for the next six weeks. And it's an emotional roller coaster. I mean, my thinking is shifting and breaking apart, and I cry every day. And my final assignment is a wall installation, which is a term I didn't even know existed six weeks before. And it includes these three wall sculptures, these sculptures made out of the New York Times business sections and the Wall Street Journal, all painted black. And they're bound in these really tight boxes. Each piece gets progressively more undone until the final piece explodes. And Bob, the instructor that talked me off the ledge, sees it, and he says, "Tricia, you know, you really ought to apply to the museum school."

 

Well, this thought had never occurred to me before. I mean, in the back of my mind, I'm going to end up in business school, that this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, till I go back to my normal life. I'm highly suspicious. And then, it occurs to me what's happening. He's hitting on me. [audience laughter] I have no artistic talent at all. He's just flattering me until he can get lucky. This theory sticks until I find out he's been in a committed relationship for the past 18 years with his boyfriend. [audience laughter] So, then I start thinking of other reasons why they may want me to apply. Maybe they think I have a lot of money and I'll be a big donor, because I was working at Harvard Business School at the time. Or, maybe they think I know people who will be big donors.

 

And so while I'm using all of my creative energy trying to imagine why I'm not creative, Charles, one of the instructors, comes up to me and says, "Tricia, you really ought to apply to the museum school. I mean, you know, you're an artist. You're one of us." Panic begins to set in, and I enroll in art school as a part-time student, but I'm still consulting. I'm both excited and traumatized, because for the first time in my life, I am not following the rules. I say to my dear friend Sarah, who's also a Southerner, I say, "Sarah, I am so afraid of being different than everybody else." And she says, "Oh, Tricia, I'm so afraid of being just like everybody else." 

 

My marriage begins to explode. And part of the reason is I'm not supposed to excel beyond men. Definitely not beyond my husband. But I had places I wanted to go. He just wasn't moving fast enough. I kept pushing him to move faster, so I could move forward. And one day, he just says to me, "Tricia, you just want me to go places I don't want to go." At art school, since we don't have grades, we have review boards-- At the end of each semester, we put up all the work we've done, and two instructors and several students review the work, give us feedback, and guide us on our creative path. I'm driving to my review board in the Jeep I've purchased for the yet-to-be-conceived children I assume I'll have. But instead, it's piled high with artwork. 

 

At my review board, one of the students writes this on his review board sheet. "You seem to be a little frantic.” [audience laughter] Very perceptive. “It has something to do with control. It's okay to let go. You're expecting this to be black or white, but the process won't allow that. You've got to let go." I'm not sure if he's talking about my artwork or my marriage. My husband and I separate, and a dear friend of mine says, "You know, Tricia, I love my husband and I love my children, but I never thought I had options. You have options." And she's right. Because even though my life is blowing apart, or maybe because it is, I begin to really find my voice and step into my artwork. My mother sees it and says, "Why is it so dark? [audience chuckles] Why aren't there any heads?" [audience laughter] 

 

It's getting harder and harder to do my consulting work. And even though I'm getting paid a fire hose of cash, I know that if I do this work for much longer, I'm going to die slowly, but I'm going to die. I realize I'm not just in the wrong job or the wrong marriage. I'm in the wrong life. I don't want to do what other people want me to do or think I should do anymore. All I want is to make art. I'm an artist. And the week we separate, they tear down my family home of 25 years, and my Jeep gets stolen. I have this keychain with three keys on it, one to the house I don't live in anymore, one to my family home that's been torn down, and one to my Jeep that's been stolen. [audience chuckles] God is banging on my hood. [audience laughter] So, I toss the keys, head to art school, and join my tribe.