Copper-toed Child's Shoe c. 1937

Majel G. Claflin made this picture of a Copper-toed Child’s Shoe, and you can see it was made carefully, with watercolor, paying attention to all the details, like the copper plate itself and the worn leather sole. It seems to me Claflin was really looking, really thinking about the thing she was painting. I can imagine she thought of it as an object, a sign of a life lived, a trace, and she painted it with all her attention. And it reminds me that painting itself is a kind of looking, too, like slow seeing. I wonder, what kind of shoes did she wear? Were they as sturdy? Maybe Claflin thought of painting as a form of preservation – these shoes are so solid, so lasting, but in fact, maybe they didn’t last. But the painting did. Claflin’s is a very different kind of realism from, say, Gerhard Richter, but there’s a similar aim to stop time. Artists are always in conversation, always looking, always trying to preserve what is.