Flat Iron Stand c. 1942

Donald Harding made this watercolor rendering of a flat iron stand, and you know, it's got this quiet presence, like an echo of domestic life. I imagine Harding carefully building up the tones to capture the cast iron’s texture, those ornate details, all that curlicued metalwork against the plain backdrop. He probably liked how the light caught the edges. I wonder what he was thinking about while he painted? The way Harding focused on this object, it reminds me of Morandi's bottles, or those Shaker artists making paintings of chairs. It’s a form of attention, a type of care. There’s no clear hierarchy between high art and everyday things. It makes you consider, how the mundane can become extraordinary through the act of seeing. It’s that constant conversation artists have, isn’t it? Taking the ordinary and making it… somehow else.