Sausage Grinder c. 1937

Edward L. Loper made this watercolor painting of a sausage grinder, and it's a beautiful rendering of this everyday object. I can just imagine him there, in front of his subject, trying to capture the way light falls across the wooden surface, the deep shadows, and the reflections on the metal parts. He’s trying to work out how to capture this object, which might at first seem mundane. But when you look closer, you see Loper has managed to extract something quite remarkable out of it. He shows us how to really look at this object, which would have been used in the home. How to consider it as a thing of use and beauty. The watercolor is applied with such care and precision to the wood grain and the metallic parts, really reveling in the object’s texture. The colors are earthy and warm and the details are really charming. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation with each other, across time, finding inspiration in the most unexpected places. And in this quiet, careful study, Loper invites us to slow down and see the world with fresh eyes.