Bonnet c. 1937

Sara Garfinkel made this watercolor of a bonnet. You can see how the painting feels like an echo of the real object; the soft, rounded forms come into being through gentle washes of brown. I can imagine Garfinkel feeling the shape of the bonnet in her hands, observing how the light falls across its surface, before recreating it with these layered strokes. It reminds me that painting is a way to really look at something and in turn, understand it. It's a visual conversation. The artist, the object, and us, the viewers. The way the brown hues subtly shift, creating depth and volume, almost reminds me of Morandi, another painter who spent his life looking at the same few objects, searching for something new each time. It makes you wonder about what seemingly mundane things hold, if we actually pause to look.