Balter Chair 1936

Beverly Chichester made this watercolour of a Balter chair, and it's less about the object itself and more about the *making* of it. It’s a process of trying things out and seeing what happens. The colour palette here is quite subdued; there’s a lot of grey and red, but it's how she handles the materials that really catches my eye. You can almost feel the texture of the paper, and that velvety cushion makes me want to sit down! It's thin in places, thick in others, giving the whole image a kind of depth and richness, even in such a limited range. Look at the way the light catches the top of the chair, you can see all the textures in that one spot. There’s something about the way she’s captured the detail and form, the way the lines and shapes come together that makes me think of the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Like Mackintosh, Chichester isn’t afraid to leave things open, unresolved, suggesting that art is more of an ongoing conversation than a finished product.