Antiquities in Rome 1981

Maria Bozoky made this watercolour, Antiquities in Rome, with ink. Look at that palette: mostly muted browns and blues, it's like she’s trying to capture the hazy light of a Roman afternoon. You can almost feel the sun beating down on those ancient stones. I love how the ink lines sort of dance across the page, they give the architecture a sense of movement, like it’s not just sitting there, but breathing, existing, right in front of us. The texture of the paper peeks through the washes of colour, and that's kind of exciting because it adds another layer of depth. Check out the arches near the bottom. See how the lines aren't perfectly straight? That's what makes it feel alive. It’s not about precision, it's about capturing the essence of a place, a moment. It reminds me a little of Cy Twombly, in that way, that feeling of sketching something real, but letting the marks speak for themselves. I like to think of art as one long conversation.