Studio Interior 1932

Miriam McKinnie's "Studio Interior" is rendered in pencil on paper, and you can feel her hand moving across the page. I can almost feel the quiet intensity as McKinnie focuses on the geometry of the architecture, the lines of the floorboards and windowpanes, the shapes of the objects that fill her room. You can see how she has paused to look out the window, or studied the paintings stacked against the wall. What do you think she was thinking about as she drew the nude? Was she considering the light and shadow, the play of form? Is it an homage to some of her artistic heroes? Did she put that potted plant there just to break up the hard lines? Or was it to give herself some oxygen? McKinnie is inviting us to consider the artist's world, to see how the spaces we inhabit and the objects we surround ourselves with shape our creativity. It’s like a visual diary entry, and I think she's asking us to remember that making art is a process, and that it’s okay to leave some things unfinished.