Dogtown c. 1934 - 1936

Here is the audio guide script: Marsden Hartley made this drawing, Dogtown, on paper with ink. Look at how the lines build up and hatch together, creating form and volume out of practically nothing! I imagine Hartley standing out there in Dogtown, Massachusetts, feeling the wind, the quiet, maybe a little sadness—it seems like it must have been a lonely place. He squints and tries to capture the essence of the place, the old wooden fence, the rocks, the sparse vegetation. You can see him thinking and feeling with each stroke of the pen. Quick marks, nervous, a kind of shorthand—communicating something essential about being there. Hartley's drawings are like a diary of his wanderings and a way for him to process his emotional landscape. It reminds me that drawing is a form of thinking, a way to explore and understand the world, and that artists are always in conversation with each other, taking inspiration and passing it on.