The Tower 1920

Charles Demuth made "The Tower" with watercolor and graphite, can you imagine? The crisp lines and flat planes in this painting almost feel architectural in their precision, but look closer and there’s this lovely softness, this light-filled quality. I can imagine Demuth carefully layering washes of blue, grey, and pale white to create a sense of depth. It’s like he's mapping out the structure of the world but letting the light dissolve its edges, and what was he thinking? Maybe he was seeing beyond the material. The tower almost floats there like a beacon of thought. It reminds me of other painters who were also thinking about form and light. Artists like Georgia O'Keeffe come to mind, with her clean lines and a similar interest in geometric forms. We’re all in this conversation together! Artists across time are always riffing on each other's ideas, finding new ways of seeing.