New York Skyline 1951

John Marin made this drawing of the New York skyline with pencil, and what’s cool is how immediate it feels. It's like he's sketching his first impressions, right? Look at the bridge and buildings, they’re just outlines, ghosts of form, but they totally nail the energy of the city. There's this feeling of constant motion, like everything is vibrating on the page. He uses these sketchy lines and angles that make the whole image feel alive. Check out the squiggles at the bottom of the image, those lines really animate the foreground. Marin has that expressive, slightly wild quality that you see in other artists like Marsden Hartley, who were pushing against tradition. Both artists capture the feel of a specific place but allow the emotional charge to come through, which I love. It's like they're not just showing you a scene, but also telling you how it *feels* to be there.