Fireplace in Virginia 1946

Arshile Gorky made this little drawing, *Fireplace in Virginia*, location and date unknown, with pencil and crayon on paper. The thing I love about Gorky is his intuitive, process-oriented approach. Here, the wispy lines and soft color smudges aren’t about perfect representation. Instead, they invite us into the messy, beautiful process of seeing and feeling. Look at the lower-left corner, at that red scribble. It’s not trying to *be* anything, right? It’s just *there*, a burst of energy contained in a swirl of pigment. And right above it is this architectural form with two dots in it. The form is roughly drawn but the dots are really dark and really present. It reminds me of the way Joan Miró would let a single mark ignite an entire composition. Gorky and Miró are from the same generation of artists and both thought of artmaking as an ongoing conversation, a space where ambiguity and multiple interpretations reign supreme.