Grandfather Clock c. 1936

Ernest A. Towers Jr. made this drawing of a grandfather clock, and another view of it, using ink on paper. Look at those lines! They remind me of woodcuts but with an almost obsessive quality, tracking the form, giving it volume. You can almost feel the artist repeating the same gesture, over and over, following and describing the object. It's as if the whole drawing is trying to show what it feels like to touch the clock. I feel a kinship with Towers. I get what he was doing. It’s about finding a form through making, about the conversation between hand and eye and mind. He uses that pen to feel his way around the subject, and the drawing becomes a record of his looking, his feeling, his thinking. I see him wrestling with form, trying to bring it to life on the page. It's a drawing but it has the presence of sculpture. A simple subject, but so much revealed in the process.