Coffee Mill c. 1940

Clarence W. Dawson's watercolor work depicts a coffee mill, a machine rendered with such care, that the artist must have been truly captivated by its rusty charm. I bet Dawson stared intently at the object, trying to decipher its forms, its textures, and its very being. You can sense a real appreciation for the machine. The way he's carefully built up those layers of brown and orange, it’s like he’s trying to capture not just what the mill looks like, but what it feels like too. That handle sticking out could be a nod to functionalism, or maybe he was simply drawn to its odd shape jutting into the space of the paper. He almost seems to be asking: how do we see, think, and experience the world through the paintings we make? Painters are always in conversation with each other across time, responding to ideas and images in new ways. Like Dawson, they find inspiration in the everyday. They embrace ambiguity, letting the artwork unfold and suggest multiple interpretations rather than fixed meanings.