Untitled [woman sleeping on a floral spread] [recto] 1956

Richard Diebenkorn made this sketch, probably on paper, of a woman sleeping on what might be a floral bedspread, sometime during his life. The lines feel tentative, almost searching, like he's trying to capture something fleeting. I can imagine him, squinting, quickly trying to capture the weight of her body sinking into the bed, and the soft curve of her cheek, lost in sleep. There's a real tenderness in the way he's depicted her. The marks are pretty minimal, but they speak volumes. The floral pattern looks like a lone desert flower, but it could also symbolize an eye… watching over her? Perhaps the lone flower also reminds us that Diebenkorn wasn’t always making large abstract paintings, but figurative work too, of intimate scenes like this one. Painters, like the rest of us, are in ongoing conversations, shifting and reshaping how we see the world, one sketch, one painting at a time.