Landscape 1943

This is a landscape sketch by Milton Avery, made with a pen on paper. Look at the concentrated energy of the mark-making, all these lines like a squall of rain coming down, it makes me think about the act of drawing itself—how Avery builds up the landscape through layer upon layer of hatching. I love the little flowers at the bottom. Avery must have been thinking of the relationship of his marks to what he was seeing; the light, the weight of things, and all the while he was finding a way to make a connection, to be present. His work is soft and tough at the same time. He reminds us that painting is about searching and embracing the not-knowing, trusting in the process to reveal something new, something maybe never seen before. It is a conversation between artists across time and space.