Capturing natural beauty

Local artist Helen Gotlib’s still lives and figurative drawings, paintings and etchings capture natural beauty, whether she is depicting the curves and wrinkles on a nude model or drawing the lines of a wilting flower onto one of her botanicals.

The artist has been creating portraits of nude females the longest. During her time as a artist in residence at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California (in 2004 and 2005) she traveled around to different artists’ studios throughout the week to draw live nude models. Sometimes every day.

“The way real people look is beautiful to me, and that’s what I hope to convey," Gotlib says. PhotoShopped bodies with unnatural proportions that wouldn't work in the real world look strange to her. She thinks the natural curves found on real women’s bodies are “the lines I like to draw,” Gotlib says. “In fact, the way I draw sometimes puts extra weight on the body and makes them curvier than they actually are.”

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