Clock, Seth Thomas c. 1937

Dana Bartlett painted "Clock, Seth Thomas" with watercolor, and it's a trip, right? It's like he’s not just painting a clock, but time itself – the domestic and decorative kind of time. I can picture him, brush in hand, trying to capture this everyday object. Maybe he was thinking about how we measure our lives, bit by bit, with these little machines. The way the wood grain is rendered, it feels personal. Like a quiet meditation. The painting is really neat and tidy. It feels very different from Bartlett's other works, in which he experiments with thick layers of paint and bold expressive gestures. And then you realize, ah yeah, this is what folk art and outsider art is, this is like one person talking to another. The picture beneath the clockface takes us somewhere unexpected and allows us to imagine a timeless world outside of time. Bartlett's work, for me, is a reminder that painting isn't just about what you see, but about how you see.