Church Door (Interior) 1937

Dayton Brown made this watercolor painting of a church door, sometime before his death in 1995. Look how the marks are built up. The colours are layered in such a way that you can almost feel the texture of the old wood and plaster. It's not just about representation, but more about conveying a sense of place and time through the act of painting. The surface has a beautiful, delicate quality. The thin washes of color allow the white of the paper to peek through, creating a sense of light and air. You can almost see Brown experimenting with different ways of applying the watercolor, letting it bleed and pool in certain areas, while keeping other areas dry and crisp. There's a small, dark, perfectly round hole towards the bottom of the door that really draws your eye. It's like a little void, a moment of pure abstraction within this otherwise representational image. This reminds me a little of Charles Burchfield. His watercolors also embrace a kind of raw, expressive quality, finding beauty in the mundane. Ultimately, art is about seeing the world in new ways, finding poetry in unexpected places, and celebrating the endless possibilities of interpretation.