Hop-Picking No.1 1946

Laura Knight made this painting, Hop-Picking No.1, with visible brushstrokes and a muted palette. It looks like a watercolour, yet the artist’s concern with form gives the piece a solidity, even a monumentality, that feels almost sculptural. The image is cropped so that our point of view becomes almost identical with that of the central figure, a boy leaning against a fence. Looking closely, you can see how the artist has made the shadows on the fence with quick, confident strokes of brown and grey, while his clothes are rendered in softer, more blended hues. There’s something kind of charming about his pose, but equally about the way that the artist has described the scene with so much apparent ease, as if the whole thing were right there, on the surface of the canvas. Knight made many paintings of working class communities, and she reminds me a little of the German artist, Kathe Kollwitz. Both artists seem to be interested in how a painting can be both beautiful and a record of everyday life. Ultimately, it's a reminder that art is always a conversation, and there are many different ways to see and experience the world.