St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada 1951

John Marin made this drawing, St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada, on a sheet of paper with what looks like a graphite pencil. It is all about the line: how it can stand in for a building, a person, or, most beautifully, for the sky above and the street below. I can almost see Marin outside, sketching quickly. He’s trying to capture the feeling of a place, not just its appearance. There is an energy to the whole sketch, a sense of movement. Look at those lines, how they’re not quite closed, how they suggest more than they define. It reminds me that painting, like life, is often about suggestion, implication, and letting the viewer fill in the gaps. There is a light touch about the work as if it's been captured in a hurry, and a fleeting moment has been immortalized. Marin's work reminds us that being an artist means being in constant conversation with the world and with other artists, riffing on what came before and pushing it somewhere new.