Notes on Malek Garden 1984

Aydin Aghdashloo made this watercolour, Notes on Malek Garden, and it captures a really tender moment, like something seen through a window, half remembered. The washes are so loose, so evocative. You get the feeling of a scene observed and painted quickly, as if the image might disappear. The grey of the wall is built up with such delicate layers, but then broken by these decisive brushstrokes. There's a real materiality to the paint. You get the sense of the artist using a big brush, loaded with watery pigment, and making these broad, sweeping gestures. And then you have the broken window panes, the little tea pot, rendered with this incredible lightness of touch. It’s as if they are both there and not there. It reminds me a little of the early work of Gerhard Richter. The blurry, out-of-focus quality, and the way that representation is always on the verge of dissolving back into abstraction. It's a testament to the fact that art is never really finished, it just keeps evolving.