Stående model, dreng, set fra ryggen 1915 - 1924

Gudrun Traustedt made this drawing, Stående model, dreng, set fra ryggen, with a pencil on paper. I’m immediately thinking about her process. The way she’s built up this figure with soft marks, rubbing and layering those pencil lines, almost like she was feeling her way around the form. You can sense her hesitancy, her searching. What was it like to be Traustedt, making this work? The figure emerges softly from the paper in subtle, almost imperceptible ways, as if coming into being right before our eyes. I imagine that Traustedt was in a state of emergence, too, her drawing hand expressing her searching mind. Like other figurative artists, I imagine she worked hard to record what she saw while struggling to find a new way of seeing. I'm reminded how artists are always speaking to each other through their work. Drawing like this is such an intimate act, don’t you think? It reminds us that art offers ways of expressing oneself while also offering an invitation for conversation.