Broken Tractor 1942

Frances Hodgkins made "Broken Tractor" with watercolor, and it's all about how shapes and colors can bump up against each other to create a feeling. Look at the way she lets the paint drip and run; it’s like she's not trying to control it too much. The colors are muted, earthy – browns, yellows, blues – but they still pop, making the tractor, or what's left of it, feel both broken and somehow alive. There's this spot where the blue of the tractor meets the ochre of the earth, and it's like a little explosion of feeling. Hodgkins reminds me of someone like Marsden Hartley, who also found poetry in the everyday, the overlooked. It's like she’s saying that even in decay, there's beauty, or at least something worth looking at. Art isn't about perfection; it's about finding something interesting in the mess.