Spur c. 1940

This is Robert W.R. Taylor's watercolor painting of a spur. I'm immediately struck by its quietness, a world away from the loud, fast action of a cowboy movie. The palette is muted, almost faded, like an old photograph. The spur itself, rendered in careful detail, looks like it has a story to tell. Maybe this was how Taylor approached making this artwork, setting aside a period to reflect on the details, and finding meaning in the most ordinary of things. I wonder what it was like for Taylor to paint this object. Did he handle the spur, feeling its weight and texture? Or was he working from memory, trying to capture the essence of something familiar? It’s like he’s trying to nail down the specificity of this one object, using the descriptive capacity of paint to make it a symbolic object. It makes me think about how artists are always looking, always trying to see things in new ways, how much looking can be involved in the making.