Whirligig 1935 - 1942

This rendering of an anonymous whirligig figure in watercolor and graphite on paper—well, it's like meeting someone and trying to guess their story. The artist who made this drawing probably encountered a real, three-dimensional whirligig, maybe in a museum or a private collection, and was intrigued enough to recreate it on paper. I can imagine them sketching the basic form, carefully outlining the figure’s rigid pose and curious proportions. You’ve got this stiff military figure, and then this ghostly sketch next to it. It's a bit like a study, or maybe the artist was thinking about movement, the implied motion of the whirligig spinning in the wind. The choice of colors—muted blues, reds, and blacks—gives it a somber, almost historical feel. It reminds me that everything we see is filtered through someone else’s eyes, someone trying to make sense of the world, one brushstroke at a time.