Portrait of the Artist's Mother c. 1926 - 1938

Arshile Gorky made this portrait of his mother with graphite on paper. Look at the way Gorky works the graphite, how he moves with the form, the way it smudges in the darker areas giving us these great textures, and think about how much of art making is just that, mark making. This portrait isn’t about precision, it’s about touch. There is a raw quality to this work. The lines are transparent, delicate, and the paper has a certain warmth which radiates. See the left side of her face, how he shades it in with diagonal marks? This is echoed elsewhere in the work, even repeated to build up the facial features. It's like he's constructing a memory, a feeling, rather than just a likeness. His practice reminds me of Picasso who was a formative influence in Gorky's development as an artist. Like Picasso, he invites us to think about art as a conversation, a process of re-evaluating and re-imagining what has come before.