Florals Black & White

There is a particular joy that lives in this piece, and I like to think it was put there intentionally. Rhoda Staley was a Long Island artist, exhibiting in curated group shows in the late 1970s alongside other serious makers — but beyond that, the record of her life is sparse., though the power in her work is not.

 
The blooms are simultaneously in focus and out of it; full and present, held together by confident gesture, and yet dissolving at their edges. That is the watercolor doing what only watercolor can do — that particular bleed from tone to tone, that soft gradation that cannot be forced or faked, only coaxed. The contrast is stark on paper but warm in person, the blacks rich with warmth rather than cold, the neutral ground of the sheet deepened by age into something almost sun kissed. The mat carries that warmth further; the toning of time has made it precious rather than diminished it.

The frame is original — thin, delicate, black with faint gold detailing — and it does something unexpected: it makes both itself and the work feel bolder for the pairing. Something about the restraint of it. The whole thing holds together the way quiet things sometimes do, with more authority than you expect.

Rhoda Staley is not a household name, and though the record of her life is thin - this piece, and a handful of others in the same idiom, show her committed hand, and love for flowers rendered at the edge of abstraction. I like to imagine her painting this with a smile on her face, knowing the joy it would carry forward.