Vermont Farm 1943

Milton Avery made this drawing of a Vermont Farm with graphite on paper. It's like he's feeling his way through the landscape, the graphite sketching out the barest bones of a place. The texture is all in the suggestive lines; they're wispy and free, never quite settling into a fixed form. It’s like Avery is thinking out loud, mapping the terrain with his pencil, but not in a rigid way, more like catching the vibe of the farm. Look at how he renders the pair of horses; they're not solid, but a network of lines, capturing their mass and energy with surprising economy. There's a sense of movement in the way the lines dance and weave together. Avery reminds me of Marsden Hartley, another artist who found something deeply spiritual in the American landscape. But where Hartley can be intense, Avery feels more breezy, capturing the quiet joy of seeing. Both artists show us that art isn't about perfect representation, but about the messy, beautiful process of trying to make sense of the world around us.