Untitled [side view of seated female nude] [recto] 1955 - 1967

Here's a drawing of a seated nude, made by Richard Diebenkorn using ink on paper. You can almost feel the speed of his hand, right? The way the lines thicken and thin, like a heartbeat on paper. I can see him working, quickly capturing the essence of the figure. What's so striking is its simplicity, how few lines he uses to describe the body. Like he is asking, how little can I do and still make it? It’s about feeling the space around the form, the negative space shaping the figure. Diebenkorn was so good at this. It reminds me of Matisse’s line drawings, that same sense of searching and finding. There’s a conversation between artists happening here, across time and space. And the conversation is about how to see, and what it means to make something. This is what makes painting so alive!