Quilt c. 1937

Magnus Fossum made this drawing of a quilt with watercolor and graphite on paper. It looks like he was working out the design of a physical quilt, maybe something he was planning to make out of fabric. The colors are muted, mostly pale reds, blues and browns, as if he was thinking about how different colors might work together, like a painter mixes colors on a canvas. There’s a real sense of process here, of sketching and trying things out. You can see the graphite lines underneath the watercolor washes, giving the drawing a layered, complex feel. It reminds me a little bit of some of the architectural drawings of Paul Klee, there is a plan or a system being worked out but it's also very intuitive and playful. Look at the way he’s used small triangles of color to build up the larger patterns, it makes me think about the way Agnes Martin used grids to create a sense of calm and order, only here, there’s something more folksy and home-spun about it. Art is really just an ongoing conversation, and the more we look, the more we see how artists are always talking to each other, across time and space.