Dominic Blake (Gibbins) - Religious Studies, 2001, Furness - talks about his time at Lancaster and how working in the arts changed his career path from administrator to life model!

"My time at Lancaster University was very special. I have the fondest memories of Furness College; beyond my course itself, which was infinitely fascinating, I met some of my closest friends in my first year, people who I have stayed close with over the last twenty years. What really impressed me right from the start of my degree, was how loving, caring and supportive the environment at Lancaster was. Although I think there was an underlying expectation that you would work hard, it was so ultimately friendly, and you were always provided with the space to be simultaneously creative.

I have been working as a life model for four and a half years, having embarked on my journey following an administrative career in the museum sector at the V&A and British Museum, within which I worked in close proximity to works of art including those of Rodin, Giambologna and the Parthenon sculptures. I work with almost every art college, museum, gallery and life drawing group in London and privately with several independent artists including Royal Academicians and members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. I also work abroad in New York and Paris.

While working at the V&A as an administrator, I became obsessed with the Rodin sculptures in the Sculpture Gallery and would arrive at work really early to admire them. During that time, a friend of mine who was studying a fine art degree asked me if I would pose for her. A month after rejecting her request, I decided to abandon my inhibitions and pose for her painting. My entire life changed in the most profoundly amazing ways following that decision!

I consider my work to be an artistic journey. I specialise in creating complex, dynamic gestural poses that move into abstraction, within which anatomy becomes blurred and confused. Challenging myself to improvise and inhabit poses that will be the catalyst for new and interesting artistic ideas and witnessing the results unfolding all around me in the form of paintings, drawings and sculptures is infinitely rewarding. Life modelling is a uniquely human experience; I am emotionally engaged and critical within the symbiotic relationships I share with those artists who draw me.

My inspiration for poses is filtered through a myriad of sources including, but not restricted to, painting, drawing and sculpture. I am inspired by all forms of figurative and abstract art and from the urban and natural world around me; the buildings I walk passed on my way to sessions, music, literature, poetry, the arrangement of branches in trees: almost anything could form the inspire a pose. Beyond those stimuli, I am influenced directly by the energy of the studio itself. Life Rooms are charged with an infinitely positive creative energy, limited only by the imaginations of those people who inhabit them.

I am an artist in my own right, my physical mode of self-expression is my outlet for creativity. The spontaneous creative connections that happen between the artist and model are unlike any other I have known. I can’t think of another subject as endlessly complex, fascinating and interesting to draw than the human form, or a more exciting place to work than the Life Room at the Royal Academy."

You can learn more about Dominic's work via his website: www.dominicblakelifemodel.co.uk