Jar c. 1941

This watercolour rendering of a Jar was made by Giacinto Capelli, who lived to the ripe old age of 100. I love how this painting feels less like a still life and more like the memory of one. The soft ochre seeps out of the pot like a mist and the blue flower seems to blossom before our very eyes. The jar wavers on the edge of perception, as if about to disappear into the ether from whence it came. You can see that Capelli isn't trying to capture the real appearance of the pot, but rather its essence, its being. It makes me think about how making something like a pot might echo painting—the artist constantly shaping and reshaping, turning and refining. He coaxes the clay into something both useful and beautiful. And then later in life, Capelli tries to recapture it, a sort of dialogue across time, like one painter talking to another.