Stående ko 1870 - 1943

Agnes Lunn made this watercolor, Stående ko, at some point during her life. It's all about the wash here, isn't it? Like, watercolour is already so fluid, but Lunn coaxes it into something even more ethereal. You can see the way she's built up the form of the cow, letting the pigment settle and bleed into the paper, like she's collaborating with the water itself. Look at how the light seems to emanate from within the cow itself! That comes from the way the washes pool and layer, creating these subtle gradations of tone. And it's not just about capturing the light, it's about capturing a feeling, a mood. I love how some of the lines of the cow almost dissolve into the white of the page; it's like Lunn is reminding us that the world is always in flux, always shifting and changing. It has echoes of someone like Emil Nolde, who was working with a similar kind of expressive colour. It’s that sensibility that art is always an ongoing conversation.