Circus Wagon Figure: Pan c. 1938

This watercolour on paper of Pan was made by John Collins, who lived from 1855 to 1995. I can feel the artist’s breath in the making of this painting, as if he carved out the figure stroke by stroke. There's a vulnerability in the way the artist shows this figure that really gets me. I imagine John Collins, the artist, must have had an interesting perspective to decide on this composition. I'm also wondering about the way he uses the transparency of watercolor to make the textures of the wood feel both solid and kind of ephemeral. This piece feels almost like a whisper in the history of painting. It's so quiet, yet it has this lingering presence, like a half-remembered song. I guess that's what art is all about, right? A conversation across time, artists building on each other's experiments.