Church Pew c. 1940

Randolph Atkinson made this drawing of a church pew, we don’t know exactly when, using brown hues of watercolor and graphite. The image is very descriptive, like something you’d find in a catalogue. But I’m also reminded of those architectural renderings that Ed Ruscha used to make, isolating an object so that we might meditate on its function. I can see the artist studying the object carefully. Did he sketch it first and then fill it in with color? Did he have to account for the distortion of perspective as he painstakingly rendered the wooden planks? The grain of the wood becomes a kind of abstract pattern. It's easy to imagine Atkinson thinking about the bench in terms of shapes and tones, not just as a functional object. Even within such a tight representational structure, the hand of the artist remains visible. It’s like he’s asking us to really consider the history of the object, and the way our everyday lives are shaped by these kinds of simple structures. I love the way it combines both precision and something else, something more elusive.