Maribel 

Curator: Immediately, I get this sense of playful nostalgia. It’s a lighthearted drawing. Editor: This pencil sketch, “Maribel” by W. Russell Flint, definitely possesses a breezy quality. It captures a certain type of female figure. All those layers! So many skirts and frills, made by hand. How long would this have taken to create as a garment? Curator: The material rendering seems quite delicate though; like she could float away! Flint has created a light touch on a figure somehow bound in many layers. Editor: You’re right. It's curious. Those ruffles around her dress seem to defy gravity. Look how Flint uses the pencil almost sculpturally, mapping the textures of the gown as much as the body beneath. Curator: It also speaks to a larger fantasy…almost theatrical, in that sense. It evokes dance, theatre, perhaps Spanish Flamenco dance. It's as though he’s showing movement as the primary subject here, isn’t it? Even though she’s perfectly still. Editor: Yes, this could very easily be a study of gesture for another composition, you know, working out the folds in real time. Look at the economy of line. The focus is really on conveying volume. And the speed of its capture implies how much time he did or didn’t have when drawing. It begs the question—who was Maribel, and what did she represent at that moment in that place? A live drawing is of the moment. A type of labour of representation that’s quick. Almost journalistic. Curator: Right, he has managed to create an idea in just a few lines, which leaves it open to our own imaginings of course. You almost wonder whether this was more about an emotional capture. Editor: Perhaps the material processes and Flint’s social context have defined the drawing, but one can also be allowed to project into the drawing’s mystery and pleasure too, as he hoped we might. Curator: Indeed.