Untitled [female nude with raised arms leaning back in chair] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this nude drawing with charcoal on paper, and what grabs me is the way he’s so direct about the making. You can see every stroke, every adjustment. It's like he's thinking out loud with the charcoal. Look at the figure's leg, how the shading is built up with these almost scribbled marks. There's a real tension between the solidity of the form and the looseness of the drawing. It’s not about perfection, but about process. The charcoal gives it this beautiful, smudgy texture, and the lines have this raw, unfinished quality that I really dig. Diebenkorn reminds me a bit of de Kooning, in that way he balances abstraction and figuration. Neither of them are interested in neat and tidy answers. Art is an ongoing conversation, and this drawing is one little piece of that big, beautiful, messy exchange.