Altar Chimes c. 1936

David P. Willoughby’s ‘Altar Chimes’ is a drawing of two musical instruments, and it’s the kind of piece that gets you thinking about how things work, what they’re made of, and how we see them. There’s a lovely flatness to the drawing, with everything rendered in a muted, earthy green, except for the chimes themselves. These are a bronze colour and very neatly drawn. You can see the marks of the artist’s hand in the slight variations of tone and line, but the overall effect is one of precision and care. This is especially clear in the smaller set of chimes on the right, where the artist has used tiny lines to indicate the different planes of each chime. This is the kind of looking that tells you something about a person, the kind of looking that’s really seeing. In some ways this reminds me of a painting by Forrest Bess, another artist who found beauty and mystery in the everyday. This piece invites us to slow down, to look closely, and to appreciate the simple elegance of things.