Spur 1935 - 1942

Gerald Transpota painted this Spur, sometime before 1995, likely in watercolor on paper. The palette is simple, with earth tones and subtle shading, and it gives me a sense of old-school illustration. Transpota's work has the feel of something from a museum of natural history, all the delicate details rendered just so. The shading is carefully layered, and you can see the individual hatching marks. Look at the place where the spur would meet the boot, with those tiny, interwoven lines suggesting a kind of intricate chainmail. The whole thing is like a technical drawing, except that it's full of gentle, artistic choices. It reminds me a little of Charles Burchfield, but with a kind of outsider sensibility that makes it difficult to place. It's a reminder that art is always a conversation, a process of call and response across time and between artists, even the untrained ones.