Female head 1912

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin made this drawing of a woman's head with graphite on paper, and I'm thinking about the back and forth he must have had with the image. The face emerges from the page through the gradations of tone—the sharp, dark lines defining the contours, the soft, smudged shading giving volume. What's she thinking, this woman in the headscarf? Is she a particular person, or an archetype? I wonder if he saw her in his mind's eye, or if she emerged through the act of drawing itself. It feels like he built her up layer by layer, a bit like building a painting with thin washes of color, letting the image slowly appear. There’s a softness, an empathy in the touch. You know, like when you try to capture someone's likeness, but you also want to capture something of their spirit. It reminds me that every mark is a kind of decision, a conversation between the artist and the paper. And that conversation is open to us, too, if we take the time to really look.