Female Image. From the series 'Search for Pushkin's Female Images' 1970

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this 'Female Image' from the series 'Search for Pushkin's Female Images', with pen on paper. The use of cross-hatching creates this wonderful shimmering surface, it is as if the image emerges from the depths. There is an incredible labor in the application of all those tiny marks that make up the image. It's almost like the paper is breathing. The lines move in different directions, they create all these different densities. Then your eye is drawn to the blank space of the face and body, it becomes full of potential. The directness of the mark-making reminds me of the work of Agnes Martin. Both artists create a feeling of expansive space, while working within a tightly constrained visual vocabulary. Art is always in conversation with other art, it keeps the dialogue moving through time.