Stirrup 1935 - 1942

This is Cecil Smith’s ‘Stirrup’ made at an unknown date with watercolor and graphite on paper. Smith is really focused on the different textures here, the worn leather, the wood, the metal. It’s like he’s trying to touch each of them with his eyes. Look at how the brown of the leather is built up with so many delicate washes, giving it a real sense of depth and age, versus the shiny silver decoration on the stirrup itself, which looks almost collaged on. The graphite lines underneath add to this layered effect. I’m thinking about how watercolor is a lot like memory, transparent and fleeting, but also how it can build up into something substantial with enough care and attention. It reminds me of some of the folk art I've seen, where the artist is so close to the subject, so intimate with it, that they see it not just as an object, but as a story, a history, a whole world in itself. It’s the kind of looking that transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary.