Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series represents one of the most significant accomplishments by an American artist in the postwar era. These luminous works from the 1970's, 80's and early 90's were named by the artist after the section in Santa Monica where his studio was located. Paper was for Diebenkorn where he relentlessly practiced his ability to see, where he could make visual contact with quotidian objects and scenes that pushed him to break away from convention and move his abilities as a draftsman forward. These works on paper encompass a wide variety of rich media including acrylic, graphite, watercolor, conté crayon, gouache, oilstick and pasted paper. The paper he used had to withstand scratching, erasing, cutting and pasting. He discovered that he had a natural dexterity to mimic on paper what he saw; however, he fought continuously to upend and set off-balance his use of line, color and point of view. Most importantly he chose a non-hierarchic approach to space whereby no one part of the composition was more important than the other. In these works, Diebenkorn shows his range of palette, his interest in light and surface as well as the study of open and closed form.
