Brevoort Estate 1935 - 1942

Gladys Cook made this watercolour painting, Brevoort Estate, with very gentle strokes and soft, pale colors. You can imagine her building up the image bit by bit, letting the watery paint do its thing. I wonder what it was like for her to create this piece? Did she sit outside, capturing the light as it shifted across the building and grounds? I'm drawn to how the trees aren't solid but are made up of hazy blues and greens. It gives a sense of looking at them through a heat shimmer, like a dream. The building has a firmness, but the garden around it seems to melt at the edges, with those washes of color bleeding into each other. Those geometric shapes that make up the grounds are very satisfying, and really give the painting its structure. It reminds me of the paintings of Lois Dodd. Both artists have this gift for finding the extraordinary in the everyday, transforming the ordinary into something pretty special.