Carousel horse 1935 - 1942

Mildred Bent drew this carousel horse, likely with watercolor and pencil, sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. Look at how she’s built up the wood grain with fine lines, almost caressing the horse into being. I wonder what she was thinking as she worked. Did she remember riding on such a horse as a child, feeling the excitement and anticipation as it rose and fell with the music? There's something about the way she rendered the red tack – not quite flat, not quite three-dimensional – that makes me think of those old folk art portraits. You know, the ones where the subjects look a bit stiff but also full of character? It's as if she's captured not just a horse, but a whole world of memory and feeling. Painters, like all artists, talk to each other across time. They take inspiration and ideas, and then they make it their own. And here, Bent is in conversation with all the artists who have been trying to capture the magic and the beauty of the everyday.