Drawing on axes deletes all other objects in gui

I've got a GUI I built in Guide and it has 4 axes for displaying images. I would like to display a different image in each axes, but every time I try to draw on the axes, every object on the GUI gets deleted, then the image gets displayed (though strangely enough in the correct position). The code I'm using to do the drawing is:

    image = imread(event(1).startFileName);
    imagesc(image, 'parent',handles.firstImageAxes);

I have also tried

    axes(handles.firstImageAxes)
    imagesc(image);

with the same results.