Lantern c. 1937

Harry Grossen made this watercolour entitled 'Lantern' and it has a great sense of process because it’s so raw, and so real. I love the texture in this; Grossen clearly wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Look at the paint, it’s not overworked or fussy; it’s like he went at it with whatever he had to hand, capturing the object's utilitarian aesthetic. There's a kind of immediacy, as though the artist was responding to the world around him. And notice the way that the dark grey almost black tones contrast with the light brown and white, creating a sense of depth. The brushwork looks almost as though it has been applied in layers, in particular the application of pigment on the metal surface. All these little marks build to form a kind of abstract expressionism of light and form. Like Marsden Hartley, Grossen sees beauty in the everyday. It is an exploration of how art embraces ambiguity, and multiple interpretations, rather than fixed meanings.