Two Dancers in Yellow and Pink 1910

Edgar Degas made this pastel drawing, Two Dancers in Yellow and Pink, in Paris, at the Musée d'Orsay. I imagine Degas working feverishly, layering stroke upon stroke, wrestling with the figures as they emerge and recede. There’s yellow and pink in the title, but I’m also seeing blues, greens, grays, and blacks; a symphony of subdued hues. The marks are loose and gestural, almost like he’s sketching with color. I can feel the texture of the pastel on the paper, the way it crumbles and blends. Look at the dancer on the left: a few strokes define the angle of her back, the curve of her tutu, and the slope of her neck. It feels like she’s caught in a moment of exhaustion, or maybe contemplation. She reminds me of some of my paintings, where I search for form through a flurry of marks. I see him in conversation with other artists across time, all of us grappling with the same questions: How do we capture the fleeting moments of life? How do we translate feeling into form? It's an embodied expression which embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.