Sketchbook; 36 pages total, containing 28 sketches c. 1921 - 1935

Curator: Looking at this piece, I immediately sense a melancholy. The bare branches reaching upward give the impression of winter's starkness, or perhaps a shedding of something significant. Editor: Well, let's delve into the details of this sketchbook page. This is one of 28 sketches from a 36-page sketchbook by Charles Demuth, dating from around 1921 to 1935. It features watercolor, coloured pencil and possibly other water-based mediums on paper. You can see how the layered washes create a sense of depth, and also see the organic subject and use of modernism style. Curator: Knowing it's part of a sketchbook offers an intriguing layer. Sketchbooks are so intimate, revealing the artist's immediate observations and thought processes. The leafless tree, thus, transforms from a mere image to a symbolic exploration of resilience or introspection. What meanings are being created and explored with what is available and at hand, almost nothing at times. Editor: Exactly. Think about Demuth's context; during this period, there was intense focus on American industry and the Machine Age, particularly within Precisionism. Yet here we see a sketchbook entirely dedicated to organic shapes, created using techniques so accessible, available and affordable to a range of makers, but deemed perhaps ‘craft’. Curator: Perhaps the image of the tree speaks of this natural persistence in the face of such cultural shifts, or even stands against the machine as a vital symbol, perhaps withstanding even the artists shift. Editor: Indeed, and the materiality echoes this; the fragility of the paper, the fluidity of watercolor, it all contrasts sharply with the rigidity of the industrial forms being lauded by his contemporaries. There’s almost a quiet rebellion embedded within this seemingly simple work. Curator: A lovely observation; I’d not thought of rebellion so directly, but instead as the expression of a rooted emotional truth made through available and immediate gestures. Editor: Perhaps that’s the beauty of it – that Demuth creates something both so intimately connected to him, his tools and circumstances, yet universally symbolic, despite its intimate form. It really underlines that art, regardless of scale or grand intentions, can carry profound weight. Curator: It offers such quiet, vital resistance and gentle emotion within a small space, which invites introspection about our own perspectives.