Untitled [seated female nude holding an object] 1955 - 1967

This is an undated drawing of a seated nude by Richard Diebenkorn, made with graphite on paper. It's a process heavy piece, right? You can see the artist figuring things out, the lines are searching and confident at the same time. The texture is all in the graphite marks, scratchy and layered, building up the shadows and form. Look at the way he defines the space behind the figure with these horizontal, almost frantic lines, and then contrasts it with the softer, more tentative strokes that describe her body. There's a real sense of the artist's hand moving across the page, a kind of dance. My eye keeps getting drawn to the figure's face, which is more or less scrubbed out. You get the sense of a real push and pull between representation and abstraction, which is something he became really known for in his later paintings. In some ways, this reminds me of drawings by Giacometti, just in terms of the anxious energy of the line. I love how art is one big conversation, you know? It’s never really about answers, just different ways of seeing.