Female image 1975

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this line drawing of a woman, we don't know exactly when, but it looks like he used a pen on paper. The beauty of it lies in its simplicity, right? Look closely at the face. It's just a few lines, but somehow they capture a whole mood. There's a relaxed quality to the drawing, a sense of immediacy, and you can almost feel Havrylenko's hand moving across the page. I love how the hatching marks around the face and hair create a feeling of depth and shadow, even though it's just black and white. Notice the way he suggests the curve of her cheek, the softness of her lips, with the barest of lines. It reminds me a bit of Matisse's drawings, that same economy of line, that sense of capturing the essence of a form with the fewest possible marks. Of course, Havrylenko brings his own sensibility to it, his own way of seeing the world. Art, after all, is just a conversation between artists, a never-ending exchange of ideas and inspirations.