A decade of memories ‘hanging naked on the wall’

Paul Cosquieri unveiled his newest exhibition of life drawings called ‘Hanging Naked on the Wall’ featuring over 10 years of sketches. The exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery consists of black and white sketches of charcoal and paint on paper. The life drawing sessions take place weekly and have done so for over a decade.

President of the Fine Arts Association Paul Cosquieri recently launched an exhibition of his life drawings at the Fine Arts Gallery in Casemates Square.

For Mr Cosquieri the sketches signify over a decade of memories and hours upon hours of perfecting his craft.

“This is an exhibition of my life (drawings) because there is as much about me, as there is about the models,” Mr Cosquieri told the Chronicle.

The Fine Arts Gallery is lined with sketches dating back to 2009 to as recent as last week.

Over the years and sessions, the style and mediums have changed and for Mr Cosquieri these sketches bring back good memories.

“I have spent 15 years organising life drawings and for the past 10 years, probably more, I started drawing with charcoal,” he said.

“Every week drawing, as the years go by you end up with 500 drawings. In the browser I have another 50 drawings. These are a selection.”

The idea to exhibit these sketches arose when Mr Cosquieri decided to look back through his work.

“One day I got the folders out and I realised it was the story of my life,” Mr Cosquieri said.

“Not only is it life drawing, it is the story of my life for the past 10 years. It’s an accumulation of memories, and each one of these drawings is of a model and I remember them.”

“I thought maybe it is about time that we do a big life drawing exhibition to exhibit what happens here every week.”

Mr Cosquieri added that Gibraltar has to evolve and accept nudity.

“This is an exhibition of humanity and what we are,” he said.

Life drawing models can be difficult to find, but the association has a pool of models.

The models are paid £25 per session and they enjoy participating in life drawing.

“There are bodies of all shapes and sizes, and they like contributing to the art world,” Mr Cosquieri said.

“We started life drawing around 20 years ago, more seriously 15 years ago and since then it has happened every week.”

This week 19 artists participated in the life drawing session. Soon there will be an exhibition encompassing life drawings from many artists.

“Something I like about life drawing is that you have a model in front of you and there are 20 of us drawing and not a single one would be the same,” Mr Cosquieri said.

He hopes this exhibition will show people what life drawing is and stressed that life drawing is not in any way sexual.

“Life drawing is observing the body, shape, form and shade. Everything is in there, perspective, proportions, so it’s all here.”

The exhibition is open on weekdays from 10am to 2pm and 3pm to 6pm until April 27 at the Fine Arts Gallery.