Lady's Carpet Bag c. 1936

Kathryn Uhl’s ‘Lady’s Carpet Bag’ appears to be made with watercolor and pencil on paper, it documents a real object, a bag, but it's also a record of seeing. I can imagine Kathryn Uhl carefully mapping out the bag’s geometric pattern with pencil first, and then applying thin washes of color. It's very detailed, with orange, green, and red hues. The orange sections form diamond shapes and each one contains what looks like an animal head, maybe a lion or tiger. The green and red create diagonal lines. I’m thinking about how the artist translated something three-dimensional into two dimensions. What choices did she make? What did she emphasize or leave out? It makes me think about the relationship between observation and interpretation, and how every act of painting is a kind of translation. Painting is such an embodied practice. It’s about mark-making, color, and form, but it’s also about feeling, thinking, and seeing in a new way. When we look at art, we’re joining a conversation that spans generations. Artists build upon each other's ideas, pushing boundaries, and expanding our understanding of what painting can be.