Two women in the garden with fountain 1905

Paula Modersohn-Becker made this drawing, "Two women in the garden with fountain", and it's like a whispered secret on paper. I imagine Paula outside, squinting in the sunlight, charcoal in hand, quickly capturing what she sees. She's not fussy, not trying to get every detail right; instead, it's about the essence of the scene, the feeling of the garden. I sympathize with that—the urgency to catch a fleeting moment. The two women stand together, figures sketched with simple lines, somehow solid and present. There’s a lightness of touch, a looseness that’s really appealing. That fountain, a simple circle with a vertical line, it’s almost childlike in its rendering. Modersohn-Becker, like all artists, builds on what has come before, and gives something to those that follow. It’s an ongoing conversation through time.