Woman Leaning Left (1976)
Part of the post MFA period drawings that initiated my exploration of figure-to-edge tension.
Pencil on rag paper, 18″ × 24″, 1976
In Woman Leaning Left I began moving the figure closer, letting the body engage the picture surface with a new immediacy. During my MFA figurative period I worked from direct observation, embracing the figure in space exactly as I saw it. A few months later I revisited several drawings from that time and introduced pictorial elements—windows, rugs, architectural edges—to activate the surrounding space and heighten the role of the picture’s boundaries. That shift marked the beginning of my deeper engagement with the figure as object/form and the figure as a means of defining void and space.
Earlier, I had learned to enjoy the sustained concentration of drawing—leading a sharpened pencil repeatedly across the page to articulate the edges of the human form while also responding emotionally to the changing surface of the model’s skin. In Woman Leaning Left, the skin, the form, and the edges brightened in my awareness. Gesture and weight pressed against the surroundings for the first time. I had placed objects at the edges of figurative works before, but here the placement of the figure itself begins to introduce the emotional tension I would continue exploring in later works.
In those later drawings the face is often only partially shown, reflecting my growing interest in expressing the emotional qualities of the human form through posture, contour, and the charged relationship between figure and edge.
Woman Leaning Left (1976)