Table Pedestal c. 1939

This is Nicholas Gorid’s ‘Table Pedestal’ made with paint, probably watercolor, maybe gouache, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's cool to think of Gorid bending over this page, translating the original design into a drawing. I can see the little washes of brown and the detail in the carved legs. The goal here seems to be clarity, a record, but I wonder what he felt about the table itself. He must have looked at a lot of tables, and I imagine he appreciated the work that went into the original. Copying is an age-old artistic exercise, but it’s also a way to honor those who came before. In a way, we’re all copying and riffing off each other, whether we know it or not, in an ongoing conversation across time. Painting and drawing like this are about seeing, thinking, and feeling your way through the world. It's like a form of embodied expression that embraces ambiguity.