Armchair 1935 - 1942

Ernest Busenbark made this little drawing of an armchair with watercolor on paper. It's green and black, pretty restrained, a classical design, and so symmetrical it almost feels diagrammatic. I wonder what it was like to make this? I can imagine him carefully building up the layers, the black lines first, maybe with a ruler. Then the flat green infill, and the gold leaf details. I think of Agnes Martin and her grids—so quiet, so meditative. Busenbark's drawing feels like that, like a mantra. In a way, it reminds me that we're always in conversation with each other, with the past, with the future. It's all one big exchange of ideas and gestures, even the simple, quiet ones.