Spur c. 1938

Robert Taylor made this watercolor painting of a spur sometime in the 20th century, and it's all about how he puts color and tone on the paper, building up a likeness of something real. He shows us the spur's details by layering thin washes and letting the pigment settle in unpredictable ways. Look at the star-shaped part – you can almost feel the rough, aged metal. Taylor’s really good at getting the texture right. You can imagine how it feels in your hand. The brown colors he used give it this sense of being old, like something found in an attic, or a cowboy's saddlebag. Each mark seems placed with a lot of care, not just to show what’s there, but how it feels. It reminds me a bit of Andrew Wyeth, that same plainspoken but careful approach to painting everyday things, finding something special in the ordinary. What I appreciate is how Taylor makes the spur both ordinary and sort of beautiful.