Rat Trap c. 1938

Henry Waldeck made this watercolor of a “Rat Trap” and, well, it’s a simple scene, rendered in a really charming way. He’s not trying to hide the process; you can see the pencil lines underneath, kinda like a map of how he built up the image. The color palette is mostly browns and grays, like looking at something that's been sitting in an attic for years. I keep coming back to the details. The way he shows the wood grain, or the little metal fasteners, it’s all so careful and deliberate. And then there are these sketchy lines floating around the main image, almost like Waldeck is showing us his working process. It reminds me a bit of Joseph Cornell’s boxes, this idea of taking ordinary objects and turning them into something magical. Art’s funny like that, isn’t it? It can make you see the world in a whole new way, even something as simple as a rat trap.