Drawing Speaking To You

The Morgan Library and Museum is having an exhibition this fall of Drawings from Louvre. Will be a very exciting show with incredible old masters' drawings. I was helping with images for the show and encountered a drawing of Camille Corot. I loved his somewhat warm-feeling landscape paintings, but never saw his drawings before. It was a nude of crouching girl in landscape and I had to stare at the drawing for awhile. Later, after I got back home, I searched for the image online, which actually wasn't so easy maybe because it wasn't the popular or common image of his art.

Studying art history, going to museums and galleries, taking anatomy classes...if you have just a slightest bit of interest in art, you just come across a lot of nude paintings and drawings or nude itself. I know a lot of artists in the history have been fascinated by beauty of human body or mystery of human body. I, in the contrast, haven't been really intrigued by nude.

But this drawing of a girl by Camille Corot was something else. It looked like it was going to say something. Just about to, but somehow held back. A bit of aching feeling. This drawing reminded me of my long time favorite drawing of Vincent Van Gogh's Sorrow.

It was about 10 years ago that I saw this drawing for the first time. I couldn't take my eyes off from the drawing because it was saying something. This one wasn't hiding anything. It was very honest and naked. The drawing was sad but it was beautiful.

Looking at these drawings, I remembered what I wished for when I first decided to do art. I hope someday, I would draw something that speaks to people. Something that people would look at it, listen to it and feel for it.

That kind of things.