Sugar Bowl with Cover c. 1936

John Tarantino’s “Sugar Bowl with Cover,” is an image in which pencil and watercolor come together to create something that appears both solid and see-through. There’s something charming about the swirl of pink and white within the glass, a bit like the marbling you get when you stir creamer into coffee, or when you dip your paintbrush into water to clean it and the colours diffuse. The artist has been careful to map out the form, and you can see the pale ground of the paper through the graphite. The symmetry and simple palette give it a cool, calm feeling. Yet there is also a sense of movement implied by the graceful flow of colour, like an invisible hand has just coaxed the glass into shape. This drawing reminds me a little of Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings, with their careful observation and subtle colour, and like Thiebaud, Tarantino seems to find something special in the everyday, transforming it into a still and striking composition.