Shelf Clock c. 1938

Lawrence Phillips made this shelf clock, sometime between 1855 and 1995, with watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paper. I'm feeling the patience it must have taken to make this image. It has such detailed rendering, especially in the wood grain and ornamentation. You can see the artist working to achieve a very particular kind of opticality and realism. I can imagine Phillips contemplating this clock and how it sits in space. He focuses not just on the thing, but on the atmosphere it inhabits. I'm drawn to the image at the base of the clock. You see a pastoral scene depicted, and the light turquoise framing is lovely. It's as though he's reminding us that time is not just linear, but cyclical, as in seasons changing, and how a moment can contain many different realms of experience. Artists, like clocks, tell time in their own way.