Coachman 1923

Boris Kustodiev made this pen and ink drawing called 'Coachman', and it just sings with the kind of stark, unvarnished reality that I really dig. The whole thing is rendered with these quick, scratchy lines, a dense thicket of marks that build up the forms. Look at how he suggests the snow clinging to the building, or the texture of the horse's coat. It’s all in the way he varies the pressure and direction of his pen. It gives it a real immediacy, like he dashed it off in a moment, capturing the scene before it disappeared. And that's what I love about it, that Kustodiev isn't trying to pretty things up. It reminds me a bit of the directness you see in some of the German Expressionists. It is this notion of trying to capture life as it’s happening, not as how we expect it to be, which I think is at the heart of so much great art. It's a conversation, a back and forth between artists across time.