Sarabande (Portrait of Adrian Segal?) 1943

Stella Drabkin made this tender image, ‘Sarabande (Portrait of Adrian Segal?)’, with soft colours and a real tenderness. I imagine her watching him play and just wanting to get it down, this feeling in her gut, this image in her head. She’s matching his gentle concentration, the angle of his head as he bends over his cello. And that bow! Look at how carefully she's placed it. The musical notation in the background suggests an interesting tension between figure and ground, something to push against. It’s like the air around him is also music, this deep purple haze of notes, a shared language between artist and musician. It reminds me of the way we, as artists, are all in conversation, reaching out to each other, across time and space, inspiring each other to keep going.