Woman and Child 1948

Liebrinski made this 'Woman and Child' using charcoal, or maybe chalk, it's hard to tell, but it looks like it was a very physical, smudgy kind of process. Look at the way the lines build up, a bit frantic, a bit like trying to capture a feeling that's hard to pin down. There's a real tenderness in the way the figures are drawn, but it’s also quite raw and immediate. The marks feel intuitive, like the artist was working fast, trying to catch a fleeting moment. The softness of the charcoal gives the figures a blurry, dreamlike quality. See the way the light catches the curve of the child's cheek, or the way the mother's arm wraps around the child? These details are rendered with a kind of hesitant confidence, like the artist is feeling their way through the image. It reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker's early expressionist paintings, where the figures are solid but also full of feeling. In art there are no answers, only new ways of seeing, new ways of feeling.