Sand Picture c. 1941

Paul Poffinbarger made this watercolour painting on paper depicting a sand picture, but when? I love how the artist uses a limited palette to construct the image of a souvenir: it’s delicate, it’s illustrative, and it's contained. The dome-like shape traps a landscape inside, with stripes above and below. I feel the artist’s hand gently coaxing the colours across the page as he paints it in this very peculiar and eccentric style. I can imagine Poffinbarger thinking about the original artwork, and the kitsch of this souvenir – and the oddity of bringing some of the beach back home, but trapped in glass! The transparency of the glass is well-captured in the translucency of the paint. Painters like Poffinbarger are a reminder that painting is a site of conversation, of exchange, of new ways of seeing that can both reference and depart from tradition. It's not always about what you see, but how you see it.