Female image 1975

This pen drawing of a female image was made by Hryhorii Havrylenko, though we don’t know exactly when. The entire drawing is made up of a dense, almost feverish network of lines, as if the artist were trying to capture not just the woman's appearance but some kind of energy field around her. Look at how the lines become more concentrated around her features, pulling them forward, and how the shirt and hair are also described by this linear mesh. What was he thinking? I can imagine the artist, pen in hand, caught in a kind of trance, allowing the network of lines to build up gradually, instinctively, defining the contours of the face and the fall of the hair. The whole image shimmers with a kind of nervous intensity – it's not just a portrait but an encounter, a record of a moment of connection. Like other artists working in solitude, Havrylenko reminds us of the power of art to communicate across time and space.