Convict Boot c. 1940

Robert Taylor rendered this strange-looking "Convict Boot" with watercolor. He probably worked it out slowly, letting the washes dry. I can imagine him really looking, I mean *really* looking, maybe trying to figure out how its different parts were made, how it all fit together. Why paint this? Was he fixated? Maybe he was a bit of an outsider himself! I love the earthy palette and the different textures he created – the wood and metal and worn leather with its tarnished buckles and bands. Those odd geometric shapes at the top are so strange. It kind of reminds me of some of Philip Guston’s later paintings when he gave up abstraction and started making representational paintings of weird and surreal objects. It also puts me in mind of other artists making images of utilitarian objects, like shoes, for instance, think of Van Gogh. There’s a melancholy there, a silent poetry in the mundane. Anyway, it’s just a painting of a weird boot, but maybe that’s enough.