Shelving field (On the slope of the mountain) 1914

Martiros Sarian made this small drawing, 'Shelving Field (On the Slope of the Mountain)', in 1914. It's all done in pencil, with a bare minimum of marks. The herd of animals moving through the landscape becomes a dotted line, and you can see how the artist's hand lightly suggests the volume of a mountain or a tree. What must it have been like to stand on that slope, watching the animals graze? I can almost feel the sun beating down, and the dry grass crunching under my feet. Sarian is almost like a seismograph, registering the barest tremors of the land and its inhabitants. The animals are drawn with a childlike freedom, quickly capturing their essence. The scale is interesting too. It's not quite miniature, but it has that feeling. I wonder if he saw connections between his work and others. The quick notations remind me of Twombly, and maybe something like Guston's late landscapes. It reminds me that we're all participating in a long conversation. Each of us trying to capture a moment, a feeling, in our own way.