Three Trees c. 1935 - 1940

Rhys Caparn made this drawing of three trees on paper, and it's all about the push-and-pull of the pencil, right? You can imagine her outside, maybe a little cold, squinting up at these trees, trying to capture not just what they look like but how they *feel*. Look at the trunks – they're solid, but then the branches are like a wild scribble, a total tangle. She wasn’t trying to copy nature exactly, but to find her own line, her own way of seeing those trees. It’s kind of like she's wrestling with them, trying to get them down on paper. I think of other artists who do this: de Kooning, maybe, or even Guston in his later years. There’s this conversation that happens across time, a bunch of us artists trying to figure out how to make marks that mean something, that vibrate with life. It's not about perfection, but about the energy and the feeling you get from really looking, and really trying.