Untitled [standing female nude with right hand raised to head] 1955 - 1967

This is a drawing by Richard Diebenkorn – just charcoal on paper, with a standing female nude, her right hand raised to her head. I am thinking about the artist in the studio, and what it would have been like to create this drawing. What was he thinking when he made it? What was the model thinking? She must be tired. I love the tentativeness of the marks. Each line is felt. The charcoal feels so dry, scratching the surface of the paper. The lines are like tentative strokes of thought, feeling their way across the page. There’s a real tenderness in the application of the charcoal. The marks are applied very lightly, like he’s just trying to find the form. The head and face are obscured, so we can't really tell what she's thinking, but the gesture of her hand to her face suggests weariness, or maybe contemplation? I really admire Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series, and you can see how he brings this same attentiveness to his paintings. We can all take inspiration from artists across time, sparking our creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression that allows for multiple meanings.