Rough sketch for the Dance 1998

Edwin Austin Abbey made this rough sketch for The Dance with graphite. You can see it’s about movement, about bodies in motion. I love seeing the artist's hand so clearly at work. Look at how the figures emerge from the shadows, built up with layers of quick, energetic lines. The graphite is smudged and blurred in places, creating a sense of depth and atmosphere. There’s an almost frantic quality to the mark-making, especially in the figure on the right, whose limbs seem to flail and twist. I love this dark, almost black, silhouette. It's a study in contrasts – light and dark, solid and ephemeral. It makes me think of Kathe Kollwitz, another artist who wasn’t afraid to embrace the raw, expressive potential of charcoal and graphite. Ultimately, it's this embrace of ambiguity, this willingness to leave things unresolved, that makes this sketch so compelling.