Two Faces of Fear 1960

Here, Connor Everts made a drawing of a skeletal figure with ink on paper. The frantic scribbles of lines, they don't conceal anything, they’re all about expression, about the physical act of drawing. The texture is important here, the way the ink sits on the page. Look at the ribcage, how the lines thicken and thin, creating a sense of depth and shadow. It’s not about perfect anatomy, but about feeling the weight and the confinement of the form. See the face hidden under the hands at the top, the face in the belly of the skeleton, and the way the sharp strokes of the pen suggests the fragility of life. There is something about these kinds of images that recalls the works of Kathe Kollwitz, in which the immediacy of mark making is essential to conveying feeling. The image is what is important, not necessarily what the image depicts.