I got naked in front of a room full of strangers. This is what I learnt about myself

Just imagine the audience is naked.” This is well-known advice for anyone who has jitters before going in front of a large group of people. However, it doesn’t really resonate for me when I’m the one naked … in front of a large group of strangers.

Life drawing as a hobby has boomed in popularity in recent years, popping up in casual spaces such as bars and clubs as more people try to switch off their devices and immerse themselves in something mindful.

I attended my first class at Life Drawing Sessions in Brisbane in 2023. Here, Queensland artist Rebecca Cunningham curates a relaxed space in which about 50 people draw while sipping wine and listening to music. In our highly digitised world, it’s an opportunity to be present and to create art with our hands.

When she started the sessions in 2014, Cunningham would usually attract about 10 attendees. But just as the number of participants has jumped over the years, so have their reasons for joining up.

Says Cunningham, “They want to try something new, to continue to practise drawing, to reconnect with art, to have creative presence, or just to get a moment of personal time.”

At my first session, a friend and I grabbed big glasses of rosé from the bar and settled behind our easels as the music played, not quite knowing what to expect. I wasn’t much of an artist and, faced with the prospect of drawing a naked body for two hours, I feared regressing into the role of a shy schoolkid in a sex education class.

Until that point, my understanding of life drawing had come through pop culture references, such as a young Kate Winslet posing for Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. But what happened in that room was nothing short of magical.

As I outlined the model’s body, her stomach rolls became beautiful, her strong thighs something to conquer with my pencil. Her shape was inconsequential except for the way I could capture it on paper. Small breasts, cellulite, disproportionate features didn’t matter here. In this space, the things we women agonise over and try to fix every day become an artist’s dream.

The time flew by and I walked out completely transformed – I’d just managed to achieve body neutrality for two hours. Thus the seed of my debut novel was sown and I began writing what would become Life Drawing.

When I got my deal to have Life Drawing published, I knew I’d have to “walk the walk” if I were to promote a book that celebrates the female body overcoming the constant labels placed on it. So I made a decision: I was going to do life modelling.

I repeated the mantra “my body is art” as I reached out to Cunningham, asking if I could model at one of her sessions. As someone with a long history of body issues and disordered eating, it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever signed up for.

In a culture where AI and social media dominate our lives, women’s bodies are so often stripped down without our consent. So it felt inspiring to choose to pose in Cunningham’s beautiful space, where the naked body is appreciated as simply a shape for artists to draw. As she says, “The human form is fascinating. For an artist, every body is a clean slate, and you have to start from the beginning.″

To really cement my resolve, I told two friends what I was doing. And of course, as women often do, they rallied in the best way by immediately signing up, with my consent, as participants in my debut session. Then they curated a playlist that included Fabulous from High School Musical 2 and Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack for pump-up affirmations. Finally, they drove for two hours to be next to me on the day.

The session takes place in a small, hidden studio on the Gold Coast. Under festoon lights, and with murals of Frida Kahlo looking down, I see the white-sheeted platform that will be my stage for the night. Overseeing the session is the bubbly Bindi, whose warmth is much appreciated. “You’re beautiful,” she says to me. “I can’t wait to draw you.” I can feel my anxiety dissolving.

But, as the doors open to the students, I flee to the curtained-off green room and douse myself in my favourite perfume as a protective armour, my leg nervously jostling up and down. Then I enter the now-full studio between my two girlfriends. With my flowing gown – easy to pull over my head – and loose hair, I suddenly feel like a bride in a medieval movie. I try to shake off that feeling, but I’m questioning all the life choices that have led to this moment.

I stand on the platform. The session begins. My body falls into a pattern of movement.

Fortunately, the environment that Cunningham has created over the years is safe, warm and comfortable. I stand on the platform. The session begins. My body falls into a pattern of movement.

We start with eight one-minute poses, me waiting for Bindi to signal “time” before I transition into a new position. It’s meditative, like a drawn-out yoga pose. I stare back at the many different versions of Frida Kahlo gazing down from the walls. Sometimes my eyes glaze over and I forget I’m naked in a room full of strangers.

I’d previously imagined that life models must be completely self-assured in their bodies and that I could never be so confident. However, I’ve learnt that body positivity often is not the reason people sign up to model. Rather, sometimes their desire is rooted in deep-seated insecurities. That the sessions would become almost therapeutic for the models, creating “a space for them to overcome huge fears”, is a benefit Cunningham never envisioned.

But it has happened. In the life-drawing studio that Wednesday night, all prejudices against my body are left at the door. It’s just a naked body. It exists. It makes shapes. The artists draw it. I am a muse. (I’ve always hated that word, but in this instance the term hasn’t been corrupted by me imagining it as a sexual caricature.) There’s something so special about seeing your body, a body you’ve hated on many occasions, given such love in a stranger’s artwork.

At the end of the two-hour session, I look over people’s drawings and the different iterations of my body reimagined using charcoal, paint and pencils in various vulnerable poses. As I do, I can’t help but think about how my 17-year-old self would never have believed she’d do this at 30. That she’d look down lovingly at her naked body in a room of strangers.

Cunningham gets emotional when she describes the community she’s created. “I love that Life Drawing Sessions holds space for people to create,” she says. “So many people don’t allow themselves to stop and try. These sessions have made that accessible for thousands.” Seeing so many people come to be mindful in their art, she says, “cracks me open every time”.

As I leave the studio for a much-needed burger and chips with my girlfriends, Bindi lovingly gifts me one of her drawings. It’s a memento of a time that allowed me to strip back all my insecurities about my body and just be. Perhaps, I think, if I can do it here, I can do it again. Perhaps we all can.

Life Drawing (UQP) by Emily Lighezzolo is out March 3.

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