Untitled c. 1969

George Bunker made this untitled pencil sketch on paper sometime in the twentieth century, and I see the hand of someone deeply engaged in the act of looking. It’s all about the process, right? I mean, look at the surface; it’s just a flurry of marks, a thicket of lines. Some are dark and confident, others light and hesitant, as if Bunker is feeling his way through the scene. There's a real push-pull here; I think especially of the bottom right corner where the lines pile up on top of each other creating this feeling of depth, then right next to it, a scattering of fainter marks which flatten the space again. It reminds me of the gestural immediacy of Cy Twombly. Both artists share this interest in the pure joy of mark-making, finding a kind of freedom in ambiguity. It's not about what it is, but about how it feels. Art that embraces the mess, you know?