Untitled 2022

This Untitled artwork by EtchingRoom1, made in 2016, gives me so many ideas! I’m looking at the cast of characters, and I can just imagine the artist going at it with pencils and crayons, trying things out, rubbing them away, starting again. The red slashes and that arrow have a real graphic charge; I can imagine the artist going over and over the same lines, pressing harder, trying to make it pop. What Exit is this? It’s a place where people are in-between destinations and a bit lost, like the artist themselves trying to find a way forward with this drawing. EtchingRoom1 is laying down marks and making shapes—it reminds me of Guston and his loose forms and storytelling. I can feel the push and pull and struggle that all painters know in their practice as we riff off the work of other artists. Painting is this constant conversation across time. It's a real messy business, but it is a process of discovery.