Trivet c. 1941

Margaret Golden made this drawing of a trivet, we don’t know when, with some kind of color pencil or pastel. It's pretty representational, but it still has something special about it. I love the brown she uses, it's not just one brown, you know? It's got these subtle shifts, like she’s thinking about the way light hits metal, and how it changes the color. Look at the way she renders the shadows! There are these lighter and darker tones to create the illusion of depth, the build-up of the material. It’s not trying to trick you but it feels almost like she's trying to understand the thing through drawing it, and sharing that process of discovery with us. The loops and swirls remind me a bit of Matisse’s cut-outs. He was really into exploring this idea of simplicity, of stripping things down to their essence. And I wonder if Golden was doing something similar here, focusing on this everyday object until it became something else, something more. It really speaks to art as a conversation, a dialogue across time.