Tally Ho (?) or Brake c. 1936

Fred Weiss made this watercolor painting of a horse-drawn carriage, sometime between 1855 and 1995. Weiss's process looks so methodical, each line so deliberately placed. And look at the delicate washes of color he’s used to build up the forms. The overall effect is kind of dreamlike, maybe because the underdrawing shows through in places, giving it a ghostly quality. I’m drawn to the wheels, they are wonderfully rendered with thin lines. There's a feeling of suspended motion. Like a photograph taken with a long exposure. It reminds me of some technical drawings, but with a folk art twist. Maybe someone like Martín Ramírez, who also had this incredible attention to detail and repetition, but with a completely different sensibility. Anyway, it’s a painting that embraces simplicity and ambiguity, leaving plenty of room for our imaginations to wander.