Untitled [reclining figure with cigarette and ash tray] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this ink drawing of a reclining figure, cigarette in hand, sometime in the mid-20th century. The way he’s built up the image with broad, drippy brushstrokes is really suggestive. You can almost feel him thinking, improvising, maybe not knowing exactly where he was going, but trusting the process. I can imagine him working fast, the ink bleeding and pooling, pushing and pulling the values to find the form. It feels raw and intimate, doesn’t it? Like he’s capturing a fleeting moment, a mood. There’s a vulnerability in the blankness of the face. A feeling of being present but also withdrawn. His early work was figurative but he is best known for his abstract work, maybe this drawing was a step in that direction. Painters are always in conversation with each other, riffing on the past and pushing towards something new. And for me, painting is just this ongoing experiment, with each stroke a question, each painting an invitation to look and feel and think.