Touched Red (working proof 9) 1991

Richard Diebenkorn made this "Touched Red (working proof 9)" as a working proof - suggesting a process of artmaking as an exploratory journey, a back and forth with the materials. Look at the surface, there’s a real sense of layering, like he’s building up a history on the paper. The colors are muted, almost like faded memories, with that grid of red lines anchoring the composition. But it's the smudges and the ghostly traces of shapes that really grab me. There's a spot in the top left corner with that flash of green and a broken semi-circle that feels like a secret language. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbled surfaces, where the act of mark-making becomes a dance between intention and accident. Art isn’t about answers, it’s about embracing the questions.