Drawing for "Bump"

Jim Nutt began his career in the 1960s as a leading member of the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists who combined an imagery inspired by Surrealism with references to popular culture, including comics and folk art. Nutt's early works featured strange characters in disquieting situations, with frequent sexual overtones. Since the late 1980s, he has focused on bust-length portraits of imaginary women, such as this one. The strangeness of his figures, who typically have asymmetrical features, prominent noses, and odd hairdos, is emphasized by Nutt's exacting, linear style in which formal echoes create elegant rhythmic patterns throughout the drawing. This work is a study for the painting "Bump," 2008, in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO.