#6 1978

Richard Diebenkorn made this print, #6, with some kind of marking tool, maybe a pencil or charcoal. The strokes are tentative, like he’s feeling his way around a structure or framework. I can imagine Diebenkorn, totally absorbed, making small adjustments, always searching. There’s a tenderness in the way he builds up the image, line by line. The surface is pale, almost ghostly, like a memory or a half-formed thought. It makes me think about Agnes Martin's grids, but looser, more human. That slightly wavering line—you see it there, on the left?—it's like a breath, a pulse. And those rectangles, stacked one on top of the other, are they rooms? Windows? Diebenkorn was always playing with space, pushing and pulling it, so, who knows? Painters are always in dialogue with each other, across time, riffing on each other's ideas, and this print feels like a quiet conversation, a meditation on form, space, and feeling. It reminds me that painting is a process, not a product, and that the real beauty lies in the searching, the questioning, and the willingness to embrace ambiguity.