Side Chair 1936

Florence Choate made this watercolour of a side chair, but when? I can imagine Florence hovering over the paper, squinting her eyes, holding the brush just so... She is capturing the form, the angles, the particularities of the chair's design with patient precision. It's a delicate dance between observation and representation. See the back, how it fans out, with looping spindles that converge into a fleur-de-lis? I wonder, was she thinking about its functionality, about how someone might sit in it, or was she just mesmerized by the chair's decorative flourishes? For me, paintings are always a kind of record, a testament to the artist's presence, their way of perceiving and engaging with the world. This simple rendering reveals something of Florence Choate's way of seeing and reminds me of all the artists, past and present, who inspire us.