Trivet 1935 - 1942

Charles McLoin made this drawing of a trivet with what looks like watercolor, but who knows, right? It's so simple and muted, you could almost miss it. What grabs me is the color. That brown against the off-white paper makes me think about the earth, like digging in the garden, maybe even the color of an old tool found in the shed. Look at how the brown kind of bleeds around the edges, it’s not precise or perfect, it's more about feeling than showing. It reminds me a little of Giorgio Morandi, that Italian painter who spent his life painting bottles. There's a similar kind of quiet attention to everyday objects, a way of finding beauty in the mundane. Both McLoin and Morandi show us that art isn't just about grand gestures or big statements, it's about looking closely at the world around us and finding something interesting there.