Chair c. 1939

This little watercolour on paper of a chair was made by Grace Thomas, we don't know when exactly. Look at the way she's built up the colour in the wood, layer after layer to create a sense of volume and shadow. See how the grey of the seat is more gestural, rougher? I’m interested in how the material qualities of this chair—the smoothness, the solidity, the heaviness of wood—are translated through this more delicate medium. It feels like she's really thought about how to render a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface. She’s not trying to trick us into thinking it’s real; instead, she’s inviting us to consider the space between object and image, representation and reality. The palette here is reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi's still life paintings; subdued earth tones, but somehow still full of light. Like Morandi, Thomas seems to be interested in elevating the mundane, finding something beautiful and profound in the everyday.