For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event - either seen, remembered or imagined. A 'finished' work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.

Although the full implications of the discovery are not yet concrete, this is a very exciting breakthrough.

If I was just to shut up, I wouldn't be a true artist.

In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas's dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly insistent, tangled and dusky. It may be around an elbow, a heel, an armpit, a calf muscle, the nape of a neck.