In the New York Times, Marisha Pessl gives Bob Dylan’s “Drawn Blank Series” a rave.

In Bob Dylan’s extraordinary collection of paintings, “Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series,” we are given insight into the expressive, unvarnished way this artist approaches the world and reminded he is that rare person who can move effortlessly between music, word, ink, paint, as if he’s just futzing around with a few different instruments in the studio. Yet again and again, he reflects life back to us with a truth and simplicity that defy words. He shows us views from his hotel and backstage dressing room, a playground slide that caught his eye, a fat curtain in his room, an inquisitive young man named Nick Leblanc. He riffs with color across the same simple black-and-white sketches the way he plays songs in concert, sometimes making subtle changes, other times brutally overhauling them. His brush strokes are like his voice: straightforward, rough, occasionally fragile, but always intent on illustrating the treads of human experience. Seemingly unworried about how something looks, he’s not after artistic perfection but something larger, a moment, a feeling. The effect is enthralling.

[...]

In the crowded “Rooftop Bar,” no one but the artist notices the solitary woman staring off the balcony, her back to us, face unknown. And the lady waiting at the bar in “Woman in Red Lion Pub” would never have dreamt her broad back would become the electric-red subject of a painting. But in her slanting, voluptuous silhouette, her choice of dress and hat, Dylan points out her power and sturdy elegance, qualities she herself seems unaware of.

One for Bob’s scrapbook.

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