Clock 1935 - 1942

Edward L. Loper made this drawing of a clock, we don’t know exactly when, but I love the directness of it. The brown watercolor wash gives the clock a kind of solidity, but the way the paint settles into the paper also makes it feel light and airy. Look at the little landscape at the bottom, the one framed by the painted yellow border. It’s like a painting within a painting! The artist shows us a house, a tree, and a field, all rendered with simple, almost childlike shapes. This feels so connected to folk art traditions. It’s not about perfection; it’s about expression. The whole piece hums with a quiet energy, like the ticking of a clock. You could maybe see hints of Milton Avery in Loper's work. I'm interested in how both artists distill the essence of a subject, and the way they find poetry in the everyday. Ultimately, art is about embracing the open-ended, the unresolved, the multiple possibilities.