Warming Pan c. 1936

Beverly Chichester made this watercolour drawing of a Warming Pan at some point in her long life, which stretched from 1855 to 1995. The way she works with watercolour is interesting, it's very fluid, very transparent. The whole thing is kind of bathed in this light, it’s a bit like a copper colour bath. The paint is thin, you can see the paper through it. It gives this sense of airy lightness to a very material object. I really like the way that it’s been built up in layers to create a sense of depth and form. If you look in the middle of the pan, you can see how she's built up the shadows to suggest the structure inside. The way it almost glows, reminds me a little of Agnes Martin. Although Martin's work is far more minimal, there's a similar kind of quietness, a similar kind of devotion to the material. Art is just looking, isn’t it?