Clock c. 1939

Dorothea Farrington made this "Clock" with paint on paper. Just imagine her at work, carefully rendering the wood grain, the gold leaf of the eagle perched on top. She was really going for it! I can picture her stepping back, squinting, adding a touch of rose to the clock face, then more detail to the tiny landscape scenes. Farrington is so focused on this object, and the clock becomes a world in itself. Time is relative, right? Maybe this piece is a meditation on time's passage. The way she’s painted it, you get this sense of something precious, something she really cared about. It reminds me of how artists like Joseph Cornell took everyday objects and turned them into something magical. I love to see how artists like Farrington find the extraordinary in the ordinary.