Tracing: Wall Street, Trinity Church c. 1915

John Marin conjured this vision of Wall Street and Trinity Church with graphite on paper, at an unknown date. It's all about the sketchiness of it, you know? I mean, it's there in the title - *Tracing* - like he's thinking out loud with his pencil. The vertical lines pull your eye upward, toward a space that's undefined, or maybe infinite. You can almost feel the city's energy, the buildings pressing in on each other. I love the way the graphite is so alive, so immediate. It's not about getting every detail right, it's about capturing a feeling. That little zig-zag at the bottom? It could be anything - a crowd, a fence, a glitch in the matrix. Marin’s mark-making puts me in mind of Cy Twombly, another artist who understood the power of the scribble. And like Twombly, Marin reminds us that art is a process, a journey, not just a destination. The beauty is in the searching.