Woman Seated on a Balcony c. mid 1930s

Mark Rothko made this drawing, *Woman Seated on a Balcony*, at some point in his career, using ink on paper. The marks here are so raw, so immediate, you can almost feel the scratch of the pen on the page. It's like he’s not trying to represent the world, but rather to catch a glimpse of it. Look at the textures! There's the smooth, almost blank face of the woman, against the frantic scribbles that define the shadows and folds of her dress. The paper itself is stained, a history of its own making that Rothko embraces, letting it become part of the image. That one little patch of intense, dark hatching behind the woman's head? It’s like a concentrated burst of energy, a little explosion of feeling trapped in ink. I’m reminded of Cy Twombly. Both Rothko and Twombly share this interest in the immediacy of the mark. Art, like life, is a messy, ongoing conversation, full of questions and never quite resolved.