Copper Tea Kettle 1935 - 1942

Clyde Cheney made this copper tea kettle with watercolour on paper. Look at the way the copper's texture has been captured. It's not just a flat surface, but a whole landscape of bumps and hollows. You can almost feel the artist mimicking the kettle's surface with his brush, each dab and stroke building up this rich, tactile skin. It's like he's trying to understand the kettle, inside and out. I wonder what he was thinking as he painted? Was it a treasured object? Did it have special memories? The care taken here makes me think so. The attention to detail reminds me that artists are always in conversation with each other, across time and space, sharing ways of seeing and feeling. It’s not just a kettle; it's a vessel of imagination, ready to be filled with stories.