Zoar Door c. 1938

Fritz Boehmer made this painting of a door, entitled "Zoar Door," on paper. I love the way the wood grain shows through the warm reddish-brown, as if Boehmer is interested in the tension between surface and depth. These aren't flat planes of color; there's a subtle but persistent feeling of looking *through* the paint to what's underneath, a bit like a Rothko. The texture looks smooth and controlled, the kind you get from watercolor, and yet it’s not washed out. There is a real material density in the framed sections, and an almost folksy quality to the wheat motif. These panels, they’re not just decoration, they’re little paintings in their own right. I wonder what he used for brushes? Something fine, I imagine. In so many ways this door reminds me of the work of contemporary abstractionist, Etel Adnan, another artist with an eye for color, texture, and the poetry of everyday forms.