Hay Fork 1938

Albert Geuppert made this drawing of a Hay Fork, we don’t know when, but it speaks to the beauty in the everyday. The rendering is quite delicate, and the colour palette is mostly neutral, making the rust on the fork become very interesting. Looking closely, you can see the subtle shifts in tone and value, and the way that they define the object’s form. I love how simple it is, really – it’s just a humble tool. But by rendering it in such detail, Geuppert asks us to really *see* it. There’s a kind of reverence in the careful lines he uses to describe the metal, and to build texture on the surface. Think of Giorgio Morandi and his paintings of bottles – artists notice such incredible potential in the mundane. It reminds us that art is not just about grand gestures or fancy materials, but about how we choose to look at the world around us.