Zinnias c. 1915

Charles Demuth made this watercolor, called Zinnias, sometime in his life. Look at how the gray wash of the background seeps and blends, a kind of uncontrolled ground for these neatly painted flowers. The red petals of the zinnias are so bright, so deliberately placed, that they look almost cut out and collaged onto the surface. This contrast between the fluidity of the background and the precision of the floral shapes creates a really interesting tension. It's like he's thinking about how to balance control and chance in his work, like a dance. Demuth, like Georgia O'Keeffe, and Marsden Hartley, was part of a generation exploring new ways to see and represent the world, embracing both abstraction and representation. And in this little watercolor, you get a sense of that push and pull, that beautiful ambiguity.