Station of the Cross No. 1: "Jesus is Condemned to Death c. 1936

Beulah Bradleigh’s watercolor painting, “Station of the Cross No. 1: Jesus is Condemned to Death,” feels so deeply personal and raw. I can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the paper, layering thin washes of pigment. Imagine Bradleigh, mixing those muted tones of red, blue and brown and leaning over the paper. I wonder what she was thinking as she created this work? What was she feeling? Was she lost in the narrative, the act of retelling? Or was she simply following the lines as they came to her, trusting her intuition? That simple but expressive outline around each figure seems very assured and confident to me. I am also drawn to the overall composition. Her placement of the figures across the picture plane speaks to a desire to find the right balance, the perfect rhythm. And that's what painting is all about: striking a chord, making something from nothing. We build on the shoulders of giants, riffing off one another, echoing and transforming what came before.