Hand Bottle Corker c. 1940

Ray Price painted this beautiful, kind of haunting, study of a Hand Bottle Corker, we don't know when, but sometime between 1855 and 1995. I love the way the light falls across the curves of the wood. You can tell how carefully he studied the object. There is a softness that makes the corker feel less like a tool and more like a character. He is using watercolour and there's something really lovely about using such a fluid medium to paint an object so solid. I feel a real tenderness towards Ray Price. What was he thinking when he made this painting? Was it an exercise in form, an interest in the play of light, or something else entirely? Maybe it was all those things. It's a beautiful object, and so lovingly rendered here. It feels like a conversation across time, Ray Price inspiring my own creative journey.