Isabel Bishop Early Sketchbook c. 1928 - 1936

This early sketchbook page by Isabel Bishop is full of scribbled figures, all those dark looping lines made, I imagine, with a scratchy nib pen. The energy! You get the sense she was trying to capture something fleeting. Bishop's out there, watching people, trying to catch them unaware. I see them as these almost melting, proto-figures, a bit like Daumier, but with a lighter touch. They are people having lunch at a counter perhaps, or maybe they are just people in the street. Look at that one right there – how the marks build up to suggest someone hunched over, caught in a moment of thought. It’s like she’s building up layers of looking, trying to pin down the essence of a person with each stroke. Bishop is trying to figure out how to make it look real but without the boring detail. And that is a struggle every artist knows well. What to include? What to leave out? It is the puzzle and the joy of painting!