Eastern Road, Turramurra 1926

Grace Cossington Smith made this watercolour painting of the Eastern Road in Turramurra with a playful, intuitive approach to shape and colour. Smith embraced the process of artmaking, unafraid to let each stroke and hue contribute to the overall composition. There’s something so exciting about the way she's built up the surface, those translucent washes of colour give a real sense of light, especially in the road itself which is so flat, so grey, but also full of pinks and lavenders. See how the road gently curves, dividing the composition, creating these angular, geometric shapes? The thick, almost cartoonish forms of the trees in the foreground contrast with the thinner application of paint in the sky. The way Smith flattens perspective reminds me of early David Hockney. Like so many artists, they use colour and flatness to create a modern type of seeing. The joy of looking at art is in embracing these kinds of ambiguities.