Sally, March and a Friend 1943

Milton Avery made this small pencil drawing, Sally, March and a Friend, on paper, as though he were just playing around, seeing what might happen. It's the kind of drawing that feels like it’s there to be added to, erased from, and maybe worked over another day. The soft grey of the pencil is really nice to look at. Look at the way the marks gather and pool on the left side of the image, making a kind of shadowy, almost atmospheric effect. Avery is a master of the suggestive line – he knows exactly how much to put down to give you the gist of a thing without spelling it all out. The gestures are casual, intimate even, and yet, there’s a real sense of structure. You can almost feel Avery testing out different possibilities, as he sketches. You can find these kinds of process-driven values and approaches in the work of Philip Guston and Forrest Bess, artists who were also obsessed with the power of suggestion and the open-ended possibilities of art. It is clear Avery isn't trying to make a big statement with his art, he is leaving that up to us.