Time of Change 1943

Morris Graves made this painting called Time of Change with what looks like watercolor and gouache, and maybe some other stuff too! Graves has this really interesting way of layering marks. They’re kind of scratchy and thin, almost like he’s drawing with the brush. Look how the bird’s feathers are made up of all these tiny, nervous lines. It’s like he’s trying to capture not just what the bird looks like, but also this sense of movement, like it’s about to take flight or disappear. It really comes alive in the way he’s used color too. The way the brown sort of bleeds into the white creates this sense of the birds fading. I’m thinking of Cy Twombly whose work also feels like a constant state of becoming. Like Graves, his work shows how art doesn’t have to be about perfect representation, but about the messy, beautiful process of trying to capture something elusive.