Untitled [nude on a draped stool with her right foot on the seat]

Richard Diebenkorn made this nude on a draped stool with ink on paper. It looks like he was really thinking through line, how it can describe a volume or space. There’s an amazing immediacy here. You can see the ink pooling, like little punctuation marks, where he paused with his brush. It feels very raw, like you’re watching him figure out the pose. He isn’t trying to be precise, the lines have a life of their own. I love the area where the legs are crossed. The lines are so simplified, yet it totally works. You get the sense of the figure without all the details. It reminds me a little bit of Matisse's line drawings. They both have that quality of being both simple and incredibly expressive. It’s a reminder that art isn’t about perfection, it’s about exploration and seeing what happens when you let the materials lead the way.