Untitled [woman sitting on knees with hands behind head] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this unnamed work of a figure with ink on paper. Look at the quick, almost brutal strokes of ink, and how the figure seems to emerge from the paper in a flurry of drips and concentrated stains. You can almost feel the artist’s hand moving, trying to capture the essence of the figure through a few well-placed marks. I imagine him squinting, head cocked to one side, really trying to see, and letting his intuition guide the brush. The ink is thin, fluid, and unforgiving. It’s not like oil paint where you can scrape it off and start again. Each stroke counts. That dark patch on the left is particularly interesting. It’s almost as if he couldn’t decide whether to define the shape or leave it ambiguous, so he went halfway and just let the ink bleed into the page. But that’s the beauty of painting, isn’t it? It’s not about perfection, it’s about the process, the conversation between the artist and the medium, and what emerges along the way. These kinds of decisions always make me feel closer to other artists.