You can never have the inside of a cup without the outside. The inside and the outside go together. They’re one.

Go Figure. Drawing, a fundamental, if not the most elemental skill in an artist’s tool kit is losing status in some academic quarters.

Not so for teacher and accomplished draftsman Suzanne Galazka, whose inspired hand and elevated talent has instructed so many scribblers and doodlers to see for more than two decades.

“I’m certainly not the first to ever have said or taught it,” Galazka acknowledges, “but maybe the most critical ingredient for an artist is the ability to see and make contact with his subject. I try to instill that in my classes (she teaches at both Artlink and Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne) along with the idea of not drawing what a subject is, but what it is doing.”

Galazka’s reputation as a driven, if not demanding task master in the studio is some ways the opposite of her own work. Her soft, sensuously contoured ink-and-watercolor figure renderings are of textbook and collectible quality. They can often be seen at Artlink exhibitions and regularly populate the walls of the Castle Gallery and in private collections elsewhere around the city.

Renderings of male and female nudes are the artist’s forte. In some cases a work may take less than 30 seconds to complete. The addition of subtle watercolor enhancements might lengthen the elapsed time to 30 minutes. The brief ones expose her rigor of seeing and interpreting her subjects as if her pen had been held aloof for inspiration before suddenly becoming energized for engagement with the paper. The result is a kind of automatism. Spontaneously capturing and freezing a moment in time. Underline here the notion that Galazka’s work is not that of a copyist but as an interpreter.

It all sounds and look easy, like the oft-heard clichÈd comment of a museum visitor upon seeing a Picasso: “Oh, my three-year-old could do as well.”

In no way defensive, Galazka points out, “It’s easy to draw unless you know how.”

Like all successful talents in any number of fields, Galazka’s roots go back to an early age. In her case it began in a blue-collar section of Detroit where she was raised.

“My father was a pipe fitter by profession who invented several methods in his craft, and he was tested to put his ideas on paper, and maybe I inherited my gifts with pen and pencil from him,” she confesses. “But from a very young age I took to drawing. I remember imitating the ‘Draw Me’ ads from comic books, and at one point I remember doing a portrait of my mother when I realized, in just a line or two, that I had a gift for it. I’ve been pretty much pursuing that line ever since.

“Other things I recall from those days were the images of the civil rights movement and the events happening in Detroit from TV and the newspapers. I tried to incorporate them in my studies. There have been many influences throughout my career, but the singular one is probably Egon Schiele, who saw what I see in the human form.

“In any event my father was very supportive of my efforts, supplying me with paper and pencils or whatever I needed at the time.”

As to any erotic components in her work Galazka is left perplexed by some viewer’s reactions.

In 1912 the Viennese Schiele was arrested, charged with producing “seductive” pictures and spent a short time behind bars. Galazka’s nudes, though anatomically correct, could never be considered “prurient” by today’s standards. There was an instance a few years ago, however, when her works were subject to a form of censorship.

“I was living out East and was invited to hang some works in a gallery associated with a Catholic church,” she recalls. “Each morning when the priest who invited me to exhibit would come to the gallery and find all my pieces propped along the hall way face-forward against the walls. Apparently the night cleaning woman took offense. The priest would then return each piece to its spot on the wall each day of the show.

“I’ve had people ask me to do ‘erotic’ things, but I’ve never gone that way. I admit that the human form is beautiful. Feet, hands and curves are my favorites, but I admire them for what they are not exactly as turn-ons,” she says.

However reticent she is to explain her art the artist challenges us to sweep away the veil of glancing perception. “I can't explain what some people read into my work. I would just encourage them to look deeper, perhaps into themselves.”

By the way, like other wanna-be sketchers, I took advantage of my meeting with Galazka to present four examples of my “work” for her to critique. I don’t think I would receive a passing grade with a batting average of .250. My irises connected just before I started to apply some shading. (“You have to known when to stop.”) The remaining three brought comments like “Your perspective is totally off”; “Yes, they resemble wind chimes, but ...”; and finally, “What’s that?” (It was supposed to be a backyard sun dial).