Fan c. 1936

This is Vincent Burzy's delicate watercolour of a fan, and I imagine him sitting and trying to capture the light, the colour, the way the leaves wrap around the flowers. It's so charming, right? You know, as a painter, I'm always thinking about how things are built up, layer by layer. There's a softness here – the way the blues and pinks blend, that must have taken a certain type of looking, a real attention to detail. I can almost see Burzy tilting his head, trying to get the right angle, figuring out how to make the fan look like it could actually cool you down on a hot day! I love the way it sits on the page, a little world of its own. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation, borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas across time. Each brushstroke is a little piece of that conversation, a whisper from one artist to another.