Chair c. 1939

Grace Thomas made this watercolor of a chair, and what strikes me is the process-oriented approach to depicting a functional object. She wasn’t necessarily trying to make a chair you could sit on, but rather something to look at. The materiality is interesting, the paint is transparent, and you can see these fluid, watery marks, especially in the legs and back of the chair. This gives it a sense of lightness, as if the chair might float away. The seat, on the other hand, is more opaque, a sort of solid block. This tension between the ephemeral and the grounded is really compelling. Look at how the lines waver and wobble, nothing is quite straight or precise. The artist embraced the inherent messiness and imperfection of the watercolor medium. It reminds me of some of the folk art I’ve seen, where the representation is less about exact replication and more about capturing the essence of an object through a personal lens. It’s like the chair is dancing, or breathing, more of a feeling than a fact.