Shroud Deck Eye 1939

Eugene Bartz made this watercolour, Shroud Deck Eye, in 1959, and it’s like he's handing us a little poem about time and transformation. The way he’s worked with the watercolour, it’s almost like he’s trying to get inside the object. I mean, look at the texture of the metal, how it’s been weathered, aged, patinated. Bartz isn’t just painting an object; he’s painting its history. It's so still and centered, yet speaks to a world of movement on the high seas. The screw thread is rendered with so much detail, it feels almost tactile, like you could reach out and turn it. It reminds me a little of Charles Sheeler’s precisionist drawings, but with a softer touch, less about industrial prowess, more about the quiet dignity of something worn and used. Art is all about looking and finding poetry in unexpected places.