Pewter Coffee Pot c. 1936

Eugene Barrell made this graphite drawing of a pewter coffee pot with a sort of humble precision. He’s interested in how light falls and wraps around the object and creates almost uniform, flat washes of grey. It’s not about being flashy; it’s about seeing. Notice how Barrell captures the floral designs etched on the pot. Each line is carefully considered, almost as if he’s tracing the history of the object itself. I like how this single drawing embraces a kind of repetition, of the same thing, or similar things, in a set of variations. It reminds me of the work of Giorgio Morandi, who made paintings and drawings of humble objects like bottles, cups and vases, or maybe Agnes Martin and her grids – so much in art is just seeing something again, and again, and again, in different ways. It’s more about the experience of seeing and recording it rather than trying to nail some definitive likeness.