Sheet of Studies (heads) 1968

This is Graham Sutherland's "Sheet of Studies (heads)", made in 1968. It's a playful dance of ink and wash on paper, where each head seems to emerge from a different corner of Sutherland's imagination. You can almost feel him working through the lines, searching for the right form, the perfect expression. Look at how he uses the wash—a kind of golden shadow—to ground each head, giving them weight and presence on the page. It's like they're floating in amber. And then there are the lines themselves: scratchy, searching, sometimes disappearing altogether, but always full of energy. My eye keeps getting drawn to the head in the bottom right, it's so grotesque, yet somehow so real. It reminds me of some of the strange portraits by Francis Bacon, artists who know that the human face can be a landscape of its own. Sutherland isn't afraid to leave things unfinished, to let the process show. For him, and for me, that's where the magic happens.