Nude with Green Stockings c. 1965

Moses Soyer made this drawing, Nude with Green Stockings, with pastel on paper. It’s a quick study, the kind where you feel the artist trying to catch a glimpse of something fleeting. Look at those marks – they build up to create the figure but they don't belabor the point. I can imagine Soyer, quickly, almost nervously, moving around the model to try and grasp the pose from different angles. The pastel marks aren’t blended, so you can see the different colors working together. It’s like he’s thinking out loud, trying to decide what color the shadow is. Blue? Purple? Or maybe a little green from those fabulous stockings? You can see that he’s not trying to make a perfect picture, but trying to see. And in that looking, he invites us to look, too. It's like a little conversation across time about how we see each other.