My birthday is just nine days away. As I approach – officially – my mid-40s, I can’t help but contemplate how I got here. By “here” I mean a full time artist’s model who works steadily, has been the subject of countless drawings and paintings, is contacted for jobs by prestigious schools and accomplished artists and, of equal value to me, regular folk who manage to make art a part of their lives and desire to work from a model. When I take into consideration the collective blessings of both serendipity and my own life choices, I am humbled beyond words. I am amazed, baffled even, at where my complicated personal journey has brought me.
A couple of weeks ago I was having a conversation in my house with my friend Greg, an artist, sculptor, illustrator, and carpenter. He asked me how I came to be an artist’s model. After a somewhat verbose reply, I told him matter-0f-factly, “Art modeling saved my life”. I gasped internally when I uttered those words. Greg wouldn’t have noticed it. But I have rarely verbalized to another person the redemptive effect art modeling has had on my life.
It has occurred to me that after four years of blogging, I haven’t fully shared with my readers a detailed autobiographical account, replete with all the slings and arrows, fears and gambles, depression, leaps of faith, and perpetual seeking that has brought me to this place in life – the place where a divorced, 40 something New York City girl with a Master’s degree in U.S. History is posing in her nude self for artists throughout the tri-state area. Perhaps I need not tell the entire story. Does it really matter in the whole scheme of things? It would be – or could be – tedious. I guess my approaching birthday has caused me to reflect and ruminate, and has reinforced the profound gratitude I feel toward this life and its people – for letting me in, allowing me to fuck up and reclaim myself, and reminding me that joys exist every day, all around us, in myriad forms. For me, this blog is one of them 
The New York Academy of Art, Friday July 13th, 2:38 PM:
