Finger Bowl c. 1936

John Dana made this, Finger Bowl, a drawing, a study maybe, it is hard to know. And it’s that ambiguity which I love, it lets us approach it as an act of pure looking. The color is luscious, a deep swirling purple, which makes the glass look almost edible. You could dive right in! It's painted with such precision, yet you can still see the marks of the brush, the way the pigment pools and streaks. This tension between control and looseness is at the heart of the work, it feels like the artist is really seeing and feeling their subject. Dana’s choice of such a simple object is interesting. It makes me think of Giorgio Morandi. Like Morandi, Dana transforms the mundane into something extraordinary through the careful observation of light and color. In both cases, we can appreciate the beauty of simple forms and the power of art to transform our perception. For both artists, art is a quiet form of contemplation.