Vrouw met gesloten ogen 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a woman with closed eyes, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century, and it looks like it's charcoal or graphite on paper. The magic of a drawing like this is that it's all process, right? You can almost see the artist circling around, trying to capture the form with these restless lines. Look at the way he builds up the shadows around her eyes and hair. It's like he's feeling his way through the darkness. There's a real tension between the finished areas and the open, unresolved spaces. I keep thinking about other artists who worked in a similar way, like Käthe Kollwitz, another master of capturing human emotion with just a few lines. Ultimately, art is a conversation, and it's up to us to keep that conversation going. There’s no one right answer, just a lot of interesting questions.