Chest of Drawers c. 1938

Arthur Johnson made this "Chest of Drawers" on an unknown date using watercolor and graphite. Right away, what grabs me is the intense linearity. It's like he's redrawing this familiar object, plank by plank, handle by handle. You can see the real care he takes to render the wood's surface and that decorative trim. I'm drawn to the bottom right corner where the leg meets the floor; notice that the pencil lines remain uncovered. I love these little moments. They’re like tiny portals that let you in on the artist's process, revealing the labor and the love involved in its making. There's a kind of relentless quality to the line in this work, which reminds me of some of the drawings of Agnes Martin. But where her work is so ethereal, this is so anchored in the everyday. Maybe that's the magic here - a kind of obsessive, reverent attention to the beauty of ordinary things.