Dog Track, Sanford 1938

Ralston Crawford made this drawing, "Dog Track, Sanford," sometime around 1938. It looks like he used ink on paper. I really love his lines here; you can see the way he’s feeling his way around the space, unsure of what it is and what it’s going to become. This is how I like to draw too. It’s like feeling the energy of the thing he’s looking at, instead of just recording the image. The lines are very active, scratchy, and gestural. The composition is all about angles and perspective, like a cubist painting. There’s something very American about it; I feel like the drawing is an emotional response to the architecture of the racetrack. It reminds me a little of Stuart Davis, also doing cityscapes but in a more abstract way. Artists are always talking to each other, in a way, even across time. They keep inspiring each other.