Untitled 1957

This untitled artwork by Perle Fine, realized on graph paper, is a playground of marks. It looks like an artist working things out, right? A dance of charcoal and pencil; thick, dark, and light. I can imagine her in the studio, the push and pull of the hand, maybe squinting her eyes while experimenting with shapes, lines, and texture. Does she even know where she’s going with this? There's a confident freedom here, yet a tentativeness, too. The graph paper adds an interesting contrast, like a structure trying to contain the wild energy, but I don’t think it can! Fine was part of the Abstract Expressionist movement, yet she strikes me as someone who was not afraid to be an individual. A gesture is an expression, a record of the body in motion, maybe even a feeling. I wonder if she knew that her lines would speak to us in this way. It’s like she is in dialogue with de Kooning and Gorky, who also knew how to make a mess in the best possible way. What do you think?