Although it has always been vitally important, the very armature on which visual art rests, only over the last couple of decades has drawing achieved recognition as a complete form of expression, rather than a vehicle for preliminary studies for work in other mediums. This evolution has come about largely thanks to talents such as John Porro, an artist born in London , now living in Scotland , whose works on paper can be seen at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street , in Chelsea , from June 1 through 21. (Reception: Thursday, June 7, from 6 to 8 PM.)
 Given his background, one is tempted to compare Porro to David Hockney and, in a more general sense, to cite a great tradition in British draftsmanship that dates back to Blake and Fuseli, although Porro is reportedly more enamored of the German Expressionists and Egon Schiele. However, his drawing is more precise than that of most Expressionists and although his line can be as fluid as that of his Austrian predecessor, he employs it to evoke a more volumetric sense of form.
 Perhaps the artist Porro seems most akin to for his deft way with the figure and sympathy for human foibles would be Toulouse-Lautrec, whose weary whores are recalled in this splendid contemporary draftsman's charcoal drawing of a middle-aged female nude, “Tell Me What's Going to Happen” (which one admired on Agora Gallery's website prior to viewing the exhibition).
Like Lautrec, even when he employs water based media on paper in a manner that could technically be defined as painting rather than drawing, it is Porro's incisive draftsmanship that activates and animates compositions such as “Mikki” and “Ecstasy.” At the same time, Porro reveals himself to be an appealing colorist in both works, employing a subtly harmonized palette of earth colors and fleshy pinks highlighted with piquant touches of brighter red and blue hues.
 In “Mikki” we see a substantial nude female figure standing with her back turned to us, the ample contours of her buttocks anchoring the figure to the picture plane, while the narrower shape of her squared of shoulders, emphasized with soft blue shadows, adds complementary gravity to the upper portion of the composition. Although the figure's face cannot be seen, the posture of her body and her expressively enlarged, claw like hands impart emotional tension to the image.
 In “Ecstasy,” on the other hand, there is a suggestion of autoerotic reverie, embodied by the figure of a bulky male nude. The pink, fleshy form, outlined by a jagged black line, appears to writhe on its belly, its face flushed a contrasting shade of red, its eyes screwed shut, one muscular arm stretched toward the viewer as it grips the edge of the bed. Although nowhere near as grotesquely distorted, the figure in “Ecstasy” can be compared to some of Francis Bacon's tormented voluptuaries.
 A simpler sense of wonder comes across in the tender charcoal drawing, “Seeing is Believing,” which depicts a pregnant nude kneeling and cradling her big belly in her hands with prenatal maternal pride. Here, as in all of his drawings, John Porro isolates an intimate aspect of humanity and renders it memorable by virtue of his ability to endow line with a sense of the monumental.