Saddle c. 1937

Curator: Here we have Gerald Transpota’s "Saddle," estimated to be from around 1937. It's rendered with watercolour, oil paint, and coloured pencil, an intriguing combination. Editor: It's so detailed. I’m immediately struck by the realism of it. The artist really captures the light and shadows, giving it a three-dimensional quality, although the floral embossing gives me pause. Curator: The attention to detail is really noteworthy, and the use of coloured pencil and watercolor over an initial painting is typical of much realist work from the period, focusing on aspects of everyday life while perhaps softening what could be a mundane object. In some ways it reflects a larger social narrative, in what elements from ranching culture were romanticized at this time. Editor: You are absolutely correct; it makes you consider that, doesn't it? What sort of person did this saddle belong to? Why memorialize it, if not to imbue some meaning upon the rider? Were they celebrating a person? Or did the artwork seek to immortalize something larger, an identity or type? There's definitely an element of nostalgia here. Curator: Considering the date, it is possible that this work may have even been part of an assignment. Transpota was an art instructor at multiple prominent midwestern universities, so we must acknowledge how it was created and what role this might have had within Transpota's career as an educator. Editor: True! I see the layers now. It’s not just a saddle. It represents layers of identity, labour, maybe even freedom. The artist could be highlighting how work, even that considered somewhat 'genteel,' can nonetheless contribute to a complicated and interesting historical narrative. Curator: It’s amazing how an item, divorced from its original function through its depiction in art, can elicit so many compelling social and historical questions. Editor: Indeed, and those are precisely the sort of issues we need to wrestle with and that the arts can promote.