Bronze Bell for the Dining Room c. 1941

Carl Buergerniss made this watercolour drawing called Bronze Bell for the Dining Room. There’s a wonderful looseness to the way the object is rendered, it’s like an idea of a bell, an impression, built up through layers of translucent washes. It’s this process of layering and building up that makes it so interesting to me. I can see the brushstrokes, the way the colour is unevenly distributed. The bronze areas have this beautiful variation, almost like patination or decay, a kind of map that charts the movement of water and pigment on the page. And that bell shape, it seems so simple, but it's full of subtle curves and tonal shifts. It makes me think of Giorgio Morandi, an artist obsessed with the subtle nuances of colour and tone within a limited range. Both Buergerniss and Morandi, in their own ways, remind us that art can be found in the everyday.