Chair (Arm) 1941

This chair rendered in watercolor on paper—you can almost feel Blakeley figuring it out stroke by stroke. It’s more than just a chair, isn't it? I wonder what Blakeley was thinking, standing before this object, trying to capture its essence. Look at the way the light catches the edges, creating these subtle shifts in tone and texture. The wood looks both solid and somehow yielding, as if it might bend to your touch. I've spent so many hours trying to wrestle with a similar challenge in my own work, capturing three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. You are always dealing with the weight and the pressure of the brush, the way the pigment seeps into the paper... For me, this is a conversation—a dialogue between artist and subject. A dance, if you will, between observation and imagination. It reminds me of the way Philip Guston would approach a simple object like a shoe or a brick, transforming it into something monumental and profound. It's like they are whispering secrets to each other, secrets that only the artist can hear.