Female image 1975

This image of a woman was made by Hryhorii Havrylenko using fine pen on paper. The meticulous cross-hatching creates an almost hypnotic background, setting off the more simply rendered face. Look at the directionality of the marks, notice how they curve and shift to describe form, while also flattening the image with their relentless regularity. The lines are close together in the shadows and spaced apart to describe the lit areas of the face and hair. I find myself wondering about the artist's process, did he do the background first? Did he plan it out, or work intuitively? There's something about the contrast between the handmade quality of the drawing and the almost mechanical precision of the hatching that gets me thinking about the work of Chuck Close. Both artists share a fascination with process, surface, and the translation of the image into a field of marks. Art is a conversation! A back and forth across time. It's never really finished.