Pembroke Table (Drop Leaf) 1935 - 1942

Bernard Gussow made this drawing of a Pembroke Table with a Drop Leaf, sometime between 1855 and 1995. It's mostly brown and tan, like a sepia photograph, but it isn’t. Look closely and you can see the pencil strokes, the hand of the artist. I'm drawn to the legs. They're so straight and solid, yet ornamented with delicate, stylized leaves. It’s a functional object, but elevated by design. It’s a bit like those little flourishes of color or texture that make their way into my own paintings – a moment of chaos or play in an otherwise structured composition. That push and pull between order and disorder is where the magic happens, don't you think? There's a kind of obsessive quality to the piece. The lines are precise, controlled, like Gussow is really thinking about how this thing is made and how it will be used. I guess that makes me think of the work of someone like Agnes Martin, in her almost minimalist approach to drawing – that endless pursuit of the perfect line. Art is just life, isn’t it? A conversation, a messy, beautiful conversation.