We meet Lily Holder, who spent over a decade baring it all before strangers and is now using her unique insight to deliver dynamic life-drawing classes.
Around 11 years ago, 20-year-old student Lily Holder walked into a freezing warehouse on the South Bank. She positioned herself in a softly lit corner of the room, flanked by an array of drapes and props.
Beneath her robe, Lily’s body was naked, other than the golden makeup and stick-on jewels lining the arches of her face.
Just 24 hours earlier, Lily was trudging through the contents of her Facebook feed, stopped by a status from Art Macabre, a life-drawing class she attended regularly: “We just had a model cancellation. Is anyone available?”
She hastily tapped a reply: “I’m free!”
“Because it was the day before, there was no time to back out,” she says. I was like, “It’s too late. I must go through with it.”
A day later, Lily is undressed before 20 of her peers. “I knew the kind of students that frequented, and the way that they treat models in general. So, I knew that I was safe and that it was a supportive environment.”
Lily remembers little about that first time, other than the adrenaline-fuelled concentration required to stay still. “Once you start modelling, it’s like, after the first 30 seconds or so, you’re so focused on the poses and trying to hold it, you can’t think about being nervous in the moment.”
What started as a quick cash source became a fully-fledged career. With experience, she built a repertoire of poses, which she describes as being “like a language in your head”.
‘Being apprehensive is you protecting yourself, so be mindful of those feelings.”
Lily
While some models meticulously practice their routines, Lily opts for a more fluid approach. “I try not to over-plan because I quite like getting to a session and seeing the shape of the room. Then, I can think: where are people going to be sitting? What’s the lighting like? What kinds of timed poses will the tutor ask for?”
Having modelled full-time for five years, Lily dipped her toe into teaching. She now runs weekly online sessions for the London Drawing Group.
“There are things that I have learned as a model that make me a more interesting teacher”, she says. “I am able to communicate aspects of drawing a figure that other teachers may not because I have more of an understanding of what’s happening on the other side.”
Now an experienced organiser, she reflects more critically on past experiences as a model where she hasn’t felt so safe.
“I did one at the National Gallery. I was modelling alone in this hallway, which had hundreds and hundreds of people flooding through. Half were taking the class, but half were just watching.”
“It was two hours of being constantly filmed. Usually, in those spaces, it’s such a point of etiquette to not take out your cameras. I felt like, “Oh, I’m not life modelling anymore, I’m just posing for TikTok. As an organiser, it was frustrating because I was like, ‘I could have organised this event so much better.'”
For those who are thinking about life modelling for the first time, Lily issues a word of warning: “You are considering doing something that requires a lot of vulnerability that you share largely with strangers. Being apprehensive is you protecting yourself, so be mindful of those feelings”.
“I would also say: ‘Do it!’”
Featured image courtesy of Lily Holder.