Vrouwenhoofd 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing, Vrouwenhoofd, sometime in his life, with graphite on paper. Look at the hurried, searching marks that describe the woman’s head. It's like Israels is feeling his way around her form, trying to capture her essence with these quick, scribbled lines. It's gestural. The way the shading is built up around her eyes and hair makes me think about the act of looking, and the desire to really see someone, to understand them. I feel the artist's hand moving across the page, caught in the act of observing and translating. It reminds me that as painters, we're always in conversation with each other, riffing off each other's ideas and techniques. And that, at its heart, painting is just another way of trying to make sense of the world and our place in it.