Kaethe Butcher

I really like artist Kaethe Butcher's figurative ink drawings. I've found myself staring at them awhile today. She has this wonderfully expressive, loose-but-precise linework, and I love the way she uses tone and contrast — both spare and dramatic.

She mentions in her bio that she's a fan of Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele, and I think I can see his influence. But while Schiele's work has often struck me as clinical — if not deliberately lifeless or grotesque — Butcher's work seems much more intimate, more connected with her subjects as people. She's struck a nice balance between being formally interesting and also being emotionally compelling — that is, between being a good drawing and a good portrait, which Lord knows is not easy.