Women share their beauty

Pomegranate Group takes turns posing for works in multiple visual media

By Vickie Aldous
Ashland Daily Tidings

The women walked on the stone pathways, past the raised planting beds, into Denise Souza Finney’s garden studio.

Some took out sketchpads, while Phyllis Trowbridge stood before an easel, setting up large sheets of paper. The deep emerald of a sky just past sunset showed through the skylights, offset by the painted white rafters.

Phyllis Trowbridge draws a portrait of a nude model during the recent art class for women in Ashland. Photos by Denise Baratta | Ashland Daily Tidings

As Pat Holton took off her clothes and began doing short poses to help her fellow artists warm up with quick, gestural sketches, Ann DiSalvo opened up a bag of chocolate.

“Anybody want a chocolate fix?” she asked.

It is, after all, a group of women.

Each Thursday night, the half-dozen women artists meet for figure drawing sessions. They all take turns posing nude so they don’t have to pay for a model. Co-founded a decade ago by DiSalvo, the Pomegranate Group is made up of a shifting constellation of women who exhibit the products of the sessions annually, most recently in March at Studio A.B. in Ashland.

Each brings a different style to the group.

The sound of hard scuffing filled the studio as Trowbridge made bold, dark strokes with charcoal to capture the essence of each pose. Her easel shook as she scrubbed at one of the sheets of paper, then all was quiet as she stepped back quickly to apprise her progress, then moved in again to darken one area and sweep a line with her fingers to make a soft gray, curving swathe across a thigh.

A pile of discarded drawings, each worthy of framing, collected at her feet.

Jennifer Longshore drew with soft strokes, while Finney switched among brown conté crayon, pencil and watercolor.

Using a pencil, DiSalvo evoked the other women’s curves with fluid, Matisse-like strokes. Holton, dressed again, captured the musculature of the next woman with lines reminiscent of Michelangelo.

(The irony is not lost on this writer that, in describing the drawings to a general audience, most of the references about style must call up images of men’s artwork.)

A woman poses nude for a recent artist sketching meeting of the Pomegranate Group in Ashland.

New to the group, Jane Markulis offered to be the next model.

“So, give some hints here,” she said as she disrobed.

“The important thing is that you’re comfortable,” Longshore said. “If you hurt, stop, because it’s not worth it. We all know what it feels like to be in the wrong position.”

“It’s just us,” Holton added.

For the women who have been in the group for some time, the experience of posing has had similar effects as each has become less judgmental about her own body.

“You just see regular bodies, not magazine bodies,” Holton said. “We’re all beautiful in different ways. We’re all different ages and we’ve had all different ages. We had a high schooler. You just appreciate all the bodies and all the ages of the bodies. We had a woman who had a mastectomy on one side. She did drape herself on that side.”

“She was in a process of accepting herself,” DiSalvo said. “She wanted to draw but she also wanted to pose for that reason. It was a positive experience for her.”

At times, male artists have wanted to join the group, but the women have urged them to form their own drawing groups. They laugh at the reaction that suggestion usually engenders.

“They would say, ‘I don’t want to draw another guy!’” DiSalvo said.

As the conversation shifted from topics as diverse as favorite new movies to the awe and pity they feel for women of past generations who had to endure multiple pregnancies and births, it’s easy to see why the women would want to maintain their small sanctuary.

“It started out practical and it turned into a great thing,” DiSalvo said. “It became like a women’s group.”

Staff writer Vickie Aldous can be reached at 482-3456 x 3018 or valdous@dailytidings.com.