Untitled [female nude resting on a bed with a striped pillow] [recto] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a nude with graphite on paper. The figure is so lightly rendered, as if she might float off the page, and you can see other ghostly sketches underneath. It gives the sense of a painting that has come into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. It makes me wonder what it might have been like to create. What was Diebenkorn thinking when he made it? The lines are confident, but not overworked, capturing the form without getting too fussy. I’m drawn to how a single gesture communicates the curves of the body, the texture of the striped pillow, and creates a feeling of intimacy. It makes me think about the work of other figurative painters and how much can be conveyed with so little. Artists are always in conversation with each other across time, and this drawing reminds me that painting is an embodied expression, and allows for multiple interpretations.