Sugarlift Spade 1982

Richard Diebenkorn made this print, Sugarlift Spade, using black ink on a sheet of paper. Diebenkorn's mark-making feels so intuitive here, and the name itself just sings – Sugarlift Spade! I can picture him in the studio, maybe late at night, with a single lightbulb casting shadows, totally absorbed in the process. With bold shapes, and a solid mass of black, he leaves space to be activated by a few splatters on the edge. Diebenkorn’s spade isn’t just a shape; it’s a symbol loaded with history. And for him, it might have been a way to play with abstraction, to see how far he could push representation before it dissolved into pure form. It reminds me a little of Philip Guston's later work. Artists are always looking to each other. It’s a testament to how much can be said with so little. The beauty of art is that it’s never really finished, and that even after the artist is gone, it keeps speaking to us in new ways.