"The Embrace" (After Jim French)

"The Embrace" 
(After Jim French)
 Kerry Wright, 1979 
Graphite on cartridge paper

I have always admired the beautiful drawings of American homoerotic artist, Jim French, who produced the most sumptuously exquisite images under the name of Rip Colt. Even though the musculature and anatomy in the drawings is impeccably rendered, it was the strikingly handsome faces that initially appealed to me the most. And the eyes. The eyes seemed to bore into one's soul with an amazingly penetrating intensity. I thought that, as a young artist, if I could train my eye/hand coordination to such a highly refined extent that I could reproduce the work of Jim French, then I was on my way to becoming an artist of some repute. So I copied several of his drawings. This is my favourite. When the film "Brokeback Mountain" was released many years later, I became aware that the iconic, and now famous, dozy embrace scene from that film was very reminiscent of this original Jim French image, so I renamed my drawing "The Embrace".