Untitled [reclining nude resting on right arm] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled ink drawing of a reclining nude, and you can almost feel him feeling his way around the form. He is searching and groping, building the figure up from a network of gestural marks. I can imagine him thinking, "Where does the weight rest? How does the light fall?" Look at the shadowy marks around the head and shoulders; they feel like an attempt to describe the volume and curvature of the body. It reminds me a little of de Kooning, but with a more disciplined, classical feel. What I love about drawings like this is how they reveal the artist's process—the mistakes, the adjustments, the erasures. It's like you're getting a glimpse into their mind as they try to make sense of what they're seeing. Artists are always in conversation with each other, aren't they? Each one building on what came before, and in this case Diebenkorn is showing us that his thinking about painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty.