Ship's Billethead c. 1939

Lucille Chabot made this watercolor of a ship's Billethead sometime in the 20th century, giving us a glimpse into her artistic perception. The colours—a warm palette of reds, yellows, and browns, alongside the sombre blacks and greys—suggest a scene caught between joy and melancholy. I can imagine her studying the object closely, trying to figure out how to represent its texture and form with just a few strokes of the brush. The curls and waves of the carved wood become something else on the page—a memory, maybe, or an echo of the sea. I feel a kinship with Chabot, this desire to translate the world into a language of paint, to capture not just what things look like, but how they feel. There's a conversation happening here, a back-and-forth between the artist and the object, between past and present. It’s just one voice in the ongoing dialogue that is art history.