Saddler's Work Bench 1939

Kathleen Spagnolo made this delightful, detailed watercolour of a Saddler's Work Bench at an unknown date. The way she renders the woodgrain, the shadows, it’s all so precise, you can almost feel the smoothness of the wood. It’s that tension between precision and the organic nature of the material that really grabs me. Look at how Spagnolo uses thin washes of color, building up the form of the bench piece by piece. There’s a real physicality to the medium here; the way the paint sits on the paper, how it catches the light. Notice the careful rendering of the castors at the base of the bench. The delicate touch of the brush here gives the impression that the bench is floating. It's a grounded object, but also, somehow, weightless. Spagnolo's work reminds me a little of some of the early American folk artists. There's that same love of detail, that same unpretentious approach to subject matter. Ultimately, it’s a testament to the endless possibilities of seeing and representing the world around us. There are multiple ways to see this simple object, and each one is as valid as the last.