One out of Two (symposium) 2016

Jenny Saville made this drawing, One out of Two (symposium), using charcoal and conté crayon. It’s all about how those materials feel on the page, you know? It’s like she's wrestling with the image, trying to pin down this multi-limbed figure. There’s this restless energy in the scribbled red lines over the soft, smudgy charcoal. Look at the layering, how she builds up the form with these quick, searching marks. It's a real physical thing, drawing – pushing the charcoal, smearing it, erasing, adding. It’s like she's sculpting the figure out of the paper itself. The red conté lines almost feel like a fever dream laid over the top. Like she’s trying to capture something fleeting, something that's always just out of reach. There’s something about the way she uses line that reminds me of de Kooning, that same searching, never-quite-resolved quality. Art’s about the conversation, isn't it?