Moving to Cape Town in 2022 meant building a life from scratch with no history or connections. Or so I thought.

The following year, on a whim, I searched for figure drawing classes and stumbled upon Life Drawing Cape Town, hosted by Roxy Spears, a name I recognised from my student days. Thirty-five years later, there I was, standing in front of my old peer, charcoal in hand, in a sunlit industrial studio in Woodstock.

Figure drawing is not a hobby. It is a discipline. After decades away, returning to it was humbling. I knew it was difficult, but I had forgotten just how difficult. The human form is endlessly complex, and our relationship to it, how we read gesture, weight and light, is just as layered.

Every Wednesday evening, off I go, materials in hand, to an art deco building flooded with natural light. Its industrial windows frame Table Mountain on one side and the Atlantic on the other. The space itself feels like a metaphor, a bridge between the city I am still learning to call home and the creative rhythm I am reclaiming.

Muscle memory fades and doubt creeps in. But something shifts when you commit to the process. The lines become surer. The fear of the blank page quiets.

In 2025 our group exhibited at the Dawid Rass Gallery in the old Castle Brewery building. I even sold a piece to a fellow artist. That experience was a reminder that valuing our own work is how we build creative confidence, a lesson Roxy and I reflected on during a visit to the Irma Stern retrospective at the Norval Gallery. We are often our own harshest critics.

Figure drawing is not just about rendering the body. It is about seeing, really seeing. The way light falls on a collarbone, the tension in a pose, the economy of a single line. Some sessions feel clunky and others feel transcendent. But that is the point.

It is a mirror. It reflects not just the model, but the artist's hand, their doubts and their growth. There are no shortcuts and no hiding. Just you, the page and the endless, beautiful challenge of making marks that mean something.