Listening Figures 1959

Rico Lebrun made this drawing, *Listening Figures*, with ink and wash on paper. Look at how these figures came into being, shifting and emerging through line and tone, through intuition and maybe even some error. I can't help but sympathize with Lebrun and imagine what it might have been like to create this. What he might have been thinking when he made it. The washes of ink create soft shadows on the paper, suggesting depth and volume, while the nervous, scratchy lines describe the contours of the figures. There is a tenderness in the way they lean into each other, listening, but there is also something monstrous and alien in the lines that threaten to break them apart. It makes me think of Goya. Every gesture communicates feeling, intention, and meaning. All artists are in conversation with each other across time, riffing off each other's ideas and approach, inspiring new ways of seeing and making. It's an ongoing exchange of ideas, of influencing and being influenced.