Untitled [nude seated with her left arm over her left leg] [recto] 1955 - 1967

This drawing of a seated nude was made by Richard Diebenkorn with brush and ink on paper. I love how immediate and confident the marks are. It's like he's thinking with the brush, letting the ink flow and pool to find the form. Looking at the figure's left arm draped over her leg, you can see how the ink bleeds and feathers out along the edges of the lines, creating a soft, blurry effect that contrasts with the sharper, more defined contours elsewhere. There’s something very human about the way Diebenkorn embraces the messiness of the medium. You can feel the pull of gravity, the way the ink wants to spread and settle. It reminds me of some of Matisse’s ink drawings, where line becomes a kind of dance. Diebenkorn’s work reminds us that art is not about perfect representation, but about the messy, beautiful process of seeing and feeling and trying to capture something of that experience on paper.