Drawn From Life traces the erotic and aesthetic development of a Midwestern painter -- from a childhood fascination with both 1940s cars and the bodies of other boys, through an unhappily extended sojourn on the East Coast, to the inheriting of his grandmother's farm by the Mississippi River where he collects a barnful of Nashes, DeSotos and Kaisers, along with a reclusive ex-convict of a boyfriend in the painter's happily settled middle age.