Foot Scraper c. 1940

Nicholas Amantea made this quiet watercolour, showing a foot scraper, sometime in the 20th century. It's a real study in browns and blacks, a humble scene of a brick and a piece of ironwork, captured with such care and attention. I wonder what Amantea was thinking when he painted this. Was he just drawn to the shapes and textures, or was there something more personal, like a memory attached to this everyday object? Maybe it sat outside his childhood home. The way he's handled the watercolour is interesting. It’s thinly applied, almost translucent in places, letting the paper breathe. The brick has this wonderful, earthy quality, while the ironwork has a definite solidity, and the shadows ground the object to the earth. It reminds me a little of Giorgio Morandi, who could make the most mundane objects seem profound. Amantea invites us to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.