Hearts and a Watercolor 1969

Jim Dine made this etching called *Hearts and a Watercolor* in 1969. I like to think of the studio, the workshop, as a place of inquiry. Dine seems to be asking himself: what does it mean to draw a heart? We have simple outlines, dense cross-hatching, and wild, almost exploding, gestures. And then, on the bottom left, an unexpected splash of watercolor rainbows, like a control or a joke. There's such a conversational tone to Dine’s marks, like he is working something out in real time. What must it have been like to hold the etching needle and drag it across the plate, repeating and repeating the same shape? These different hearts remind me of Cy Twombly's mark-making, the way a repeated gesture can become a form of notation or personal language. Artists are always in conversation with each other like this, riffing on ideas and pushing them in new directions. Ultimately, this piece reminds me that painting is a form of embodied expression. It embraces ambiguity and invites multiple readings, rather than fixed interpretations.