Untitled [seated nude resting her head on her right hand] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a seated nude with ink on paper, and what strikes me is the process. It is all about the line, and the line is all about the artist figuring out what he sees. The texture of the ink line is interesting here: it's not uniform, varying in thickness and darkness as it moves across the paper, sometimes shaky and tentative, sometimes confident and bold. See how the seemingly simple, almost childlike lines coalesce to produce the figure’s weight on the bed. I feel like I can understand drawing by watching him draw. It is like Diebenkorn is thinking out loud. There’s a relationship to Matisse in the subject matter, but also in the freedom of the mark making. Like a conversation across time. But it’s also very much Diebenkorn. It’s like he’s working something out, and maybe that "something" is never really resolved, and that’s OK. It's more than OK, it’s the whole point.