Rocker c. 1940

Ursula Lauderdale made this drawing of a rocker, we don’t know exactly when, and there’s something about the patience of the drawing, the way she's carefully layered these brown washes, that makes me think about the hours she might have spent with that chair. The whole piece is made up of very subtle tonal shifts, almost like she's whispering color onto the page. Look at the seat of the chair, the way she’s built up these layers, so we can almost feel the grain of the wood. The legs are slightly angled, there's a little wobble. The chair looks well-used, well-loved. Lauderdale makes me think a bit of Marsden Hartley, with his interest in American folk art, or maybe Agnes Martin, in the way she’s creating such a meditative space with such a simple subject. It's not just a chair, it's a feeling, a memory, a whole world of associations.