Food, wine and the fine art of sketching

By CATHERINE LANGSTON, Special to the GazetteFebruary 28, 2009

From: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Entertainment/Food+wine+fine+sketching/1338411/story.html

Squinting into the dimly lit foyer, I pressed the door buzzer beside the peel-off label reading Galerie Synesthésie. Seconds later, I was buzzed off the short, edgy stretch of Ste. Catherine St. E. near St. Laurent Blvd., and into the gallery's drawing workshop. It was like flipping the channel from a black-and-white indie documentary on street kids to a reality show in hyper-colour about an artist's loft.

But reality TV had nothing on the gallery's live model workshop when I walked in that Saturday afternoon to try my hand at sketching. A dozen-plus artists were grouped at work stations throughout the airy studio loft, preparing their materials and chatting. The model was stretching before her job under the bright lights. Soft music drifted around the long run of high-ceilinged space. Bowls of juicy grapes, ripe berries, salted nuts and chocolate biscuits surrounded a fresh baguette and cheeses. Red and white wine was on tap.

This was a drawing workshop?

"With sensory stimulus, people draw links between different sources of inspiration," explained owner Anthony Walsh, who's been running Galerie Synesthésie, which holds live model drawing sessions, art classes, and art exhibitions, since 2007.

Stimuli such as music, food or alcohol light up the brain's pleasure zones, he said, making the world, or in this case the drawing workshop, a more magical place.

Except that no one was draining the wine cartons dry. In fact, the artists seemed rooted by the challenge of rapidly sketching their impressions of the model before each 60-second pose dissolved then reformed into another. The short poses "get people into a creative state of flow" where they stop being self-critical, said Walsh, a master's student in Université de Montréal's psychology program.

So forget that Grade 2 teacher's warning not to colour outside the lines. Unlike our artistically suppressed

7-year-old selves, the sketchers at this gallery simply turn the page on their errors. And it works: halfway into the three-hour session, the Nefertiti-like necks and football shoulders of my earlier sketches had shrunk to more realistic shapes and proportions.

Art therapist Thomas Shortliffe agrees that over-rationalizing blocks the creative process, but said self-critiquing can aid growth.

"Through art, we understand about our creative process ... at the end of the process, we feel more secure in the development of our abilities," said Shortliffe, who holds a graduate degree in art therapy from Concordia University.

CÉGEP teacher and workshop regular Jane Petring said her sense of accomplishment is "related to how satisfied I am with what I produce. If I'm not working at developing (my abilities), I don't want to go there."

Walsh agreed, adding that by learning to use artists' tools for measuring angles and distances, for example, participants can start to put what they see on paper.

Sure enough, three hours and countless poses later, my first short, light, careful pencil strokes on newsprint had gradually been worked into firmer, darker, more fluid lines that captured some of the model's form and energy. And when the model stirred from her last long pose, I picked up my wine glass to toast myself for pushing past an ordinary glass door into an exceptional place.

Galerie Synesthésie is at 94 Ste. Catherine St. E., Suite 7. The three-hour sketching sessions with live models are open to everyone. Cost is $15. Sessions are on Saturdays from 4 to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 2:30 to 5:30 pm. For more information, visit www.galeriesynesthesie.com or call 514-998-7625