Carpet Bag c. 1937

Edna Rex’s watercolor painting shows a carpet bag, rendered in muted pinks, browns, and greens. Looking at this, I imagine Edna experimenting with washes of color, letting the pigment pool and blend on the paper. I sympathize with her artistic challenge here, trying to capture the bag's form and texture with such fluid, translucent means. You can almost see her tilting the paper, guiding the flow of the watercolor to create these soft edges and subtle gradations. She probably thought a lot about tone and color and how to give the impression of a weighty object with very little. The floral motifs become abstract shapes in the folds of the bag, and this tension between representation and abstraction is something many artists explore. It's like she's asking, "How much detail is enough? How can I suggest the essence of this bag without getting too literal?" I think she's in conversation with all the other painters who ever struggled to see the world with their eyes, and then translate it back to the world with their hands. Painting is a way of thinking, and seeing, and feeling.