Sea Bird Saga V 1966

Wallace Bradstreet Putnam made this charcoal drawing, Sea Bird Saga V, which reminds me of Kline's gestural abstraction. I imagine Putnam, a bird watcher, rapidly moving his hand across the paper, as if tracing a bird in flight! There’s a real sense of dynamism in the layering of marks, which both obscure and reveal the image. You can see how the charcoal has been built up, rubbed away, and reworked. What was he thinking when he made it? Was he trying to capture the essence of the bird's movement, its energy, its spirit? There’s this big looping gesture at the top which feels like a wing – or maybe a wave? It’s so evocative, almost like a dance move, you know? I love how he embraces the ambiguity and uncertainty of the medium. You can feel the artist really wrestling with the charcoal! It’s as if he's in conversation with something, both inside and outside himself.