Study for "Chinese Information Travel"—Equestrian 1980

This is a pencil study by Larry Rivers for his "Chinese Information Travel"—Equestrian. Look closely, and you can see the ghost of the artist’s hand moving across the paper, sketching and searching. Rivers is feeling out the shapes, isn't he? The horse, the rider, the rocks – he coaxes them into being with soft, smudgy lines. I wonder what Rivers was thinking about when he made this? The push and pull of cultures, maybe? It is intriguing how he returns to a motif. He uses these marks, lines and shapes to figure something out. It’s like he is asking what can a drawing communicate? What kind of feeling can come from the barest means? Rivers reminds me that all artists are in conversation, riffing off each other’s ideas across time. And that a simple gesture can hold so much feeling and ambiguity, allowing for endless possibilities. It is an invitation to see the world in new ways.