Mug c. 1936

Nicholas Amantea made this lovely little painting of a mug, on paper. I’m really taken with how the artist has approached this subject. It’s all about light and shadow, isn’t it? The mug seems to emerge from a darker ground through a patient build-up of tones. I imagine Amantea carefully layering the paint, coaxing out the form. There’s a kind of humble beauty here, in the way the brown hues shift and glow. It’s about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. And look at that handle, slightly off-kilter, imperfect. You can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the page, hesitating, correcting. It makes me think about other artists who found profundity in everyday objects, like Giorgio Morandi with his bottles. Artists, really, are in an ongoing conversation across time, inspiring each other to see the world anew.