Sunday Art Dialogue: The Personality of a Line

If I showed you only the line, could you tell me something about the person who made it?

What can a line tell us about the person who drew it?

It can be hesitant decisive, nervous or sensual, searching or authoritative.

It can whisper, shout, dance, hesitate, stumble or race across a paper. It can describe the physical world — or it can become completely independent of it.

Perhaps this is why drawing can sometimes reveal an artist more intimately than a finished painting.

This Sunday, I'm looking at the importance of drawing - and at the remarkable way an artist's personality can emerge through the simplest of marks.

From Matisse, whose economical lines seem to capture the essence of a figure, to Paul Klee, who famously described drawing as "taking a line for a walk", from the charged angularity of Egon Schiele and the sensuality of Gustav Klimt, to the observational line of David Hockney, the instinctive marks of Cy Twombly and the independent, almost musical lines of Kandinsky.

And perhaps that is the fascinating journey: from line as description to line as expression to line as personality.

We can look at a Matisse line and feel its economy.

A Schiele line seems restless.

A Klimt line sensual.

A Klee line curious.

A Hockney line observant.

A Twombly line instinctive and exploratory. 

A Kandinsky line musical.

A painting may contain layers of decisions, revisions, colour, texture and material. A line can sometimes feel closer to the artist's hand — almost like a signature before the signature.

The drawing may be where we encounter the artist thinking.

And perhaps, when we look closely enough, we can see not only what the artist saw - but how they saw it.

Please share your opinion...either as an artist or as a viewer of artworks...do you have a favourite type of line?