Ship's Billethead from Richard S. Leaming c. 1939

Frances Cohen made this watercolor rendering of a ship’s Billethead. The colors are what grab me first - that ochre, cadmium yellow. It feels like it comes straight from the sun, with these darker browns and blacks adding so much depth. I am imagining Cohen closely observing the object, probably in raking light to better render the way the light falls across the carved wood. The shapes and forms of these rococo-like decorations are all so deliberate, you know? Each curve probably took hours. The color is brushed thinly in some areas to pick up the texture of the paper, and layered in others, almost as if to add density to the object. This work makes me think about the relationship between seeing and touching, and how rendering an object can be a form of inquiry. Cohen’s image is not just about representation; it's about making us look closely and question how objects come into being, and how artists translate those objects into images.