Center Fire Revolver c. 1941

Joseph Cannella made this Center Fire Revolver, a watercolor on paper, sometime in his lifetime, which spanned from the mid-19th to the late 20th century. I wonder what it was like for Cannella to slowly build up the layers of this composition, and to let the revolver emerge from the off-white background. The color palette is muted and metallic. It makes me think that the act of painting this object was a quiet act of observation. It’s interesting how Cannella's marks are simple and descriptive, like the work of an engineer perhaps, yet the details of the revolver are smudged, blurred, and slightly out of focus. I can imagine Cannella carefully considering how to portray this object as the medium of watercolor offered a particular lens. And now, we can see what Cannella saw. This exchange across time is what keeps artists inspired, in an ongoing conversation.