Untitled [standing female nude leaning on chair arm] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a standing female nude leaning on a chair arm, with what looks like a piece of charcoal. What strikes me is how Diebenkorn embraced the idea of artmaking as a process of constant adjustment and searching. You can see his lines are tentative, searching. The texture of the charcoal on the paper gives the drawing a tactile quality, like you could reach out and smudge the marks. The surface is raw and immediate. I keep coming back to the lines that form the figure's head, they’re almost scribbled, yet they somehow convey the weight and volume of her hair. It feels like a metaphor for the way we perceive and understand the world, not as a set of fixed forms, but as a fluid and ever-changing process. Looking at this piece I am reminded of the drawings of Matisse, or maybe Giacometti. There’s a similar sense of capturing the essence of a subject through a kind of restless, probing mark-making. Ultimately, Diebenkorn’s drawing invites us to embrace ambiguity.