Watching Thinking: Self-Reflection and the Study of Process in Drawing

Charles Ritchie, artist and associate curator, department of modern prints and drawings, National Gallery of Art As an artist who has worked behind the scenes with the prints and drawings collections of the National Gallery of Art for 35 years, associate curator Charles Ritchie relishes his unique vantage point for watching artists think. He has an intimate view of everything from the sketching, erasing, and refining at the core of drawing, to studying the sequences of proof impressions that record the development of a print. On March 25, 2019, as part of the Works in Progress series at the National Gallery of Art, Ritchie shares how his own drawing, journal keeping, and printmaking have been influenced by what he’s learned. The presentation offers a collection of his observations.