Keys to John Marshall House c. 1937

Edna Rex made this small painting of three keys with what looks like watercolor on paper. They’re arranged kind of evenly across the frame, each one slightly different from the others, not identical, but definitely related. I wonder what Rex was thinking about as she painted these keys? Maybe the John Marshall House? It’s almost like she was handling those old keys, turning them over and over, studying each little detail, and figuring out how to translate that into paint. Look at the color she mixes to get that rusty, metallic brown. There’s an almost sculptural, three-dimensional quality to the keys – the paper almost disappears. These keys remind me of Morandi's bottles, in that they transform something ordinary into something worthy of careful attention. It feels like Rex is saying that even the simplest objects can be beautiful and mysterious if you really take the time to look. And that’s what all us painters are trying to do, right? Show you how we see the world, one brushstroke at a time.