Making large drawings involves committing a voluminous mass of discrete, intentional marks to paper. I experience profound mystery in the instant that I recognize these charcoal marks as the subject I am drawing. In that moment, a complex, shifting collection of thoughts, memories, and emotions arise, provoking me to question what I know as me, us, and them. With this subject, Marie, I explore the inter-subjective qualities of our relationship, as well as objective and subjective aspects of her physicality and character. As her husband, I have a distinct vantage on the lifetime of experience comprised in her complex gaze. Yet making this drawing also challenged me to explore aspects of her that extend past my direct experience. Marie is a conflict specialist in the field of international development. Her accounts from volatile, struggling places in our world are embedded in the fragile interplay of recognition and charcoal marks.