Brains, Blood, Sweat, and Tears Peters, Memorial Bridge (Oil on Canvas, 1932)R. Crawford, Whitestone Bridge (Oil on Canvas, 1939)You can accomplish anything with thought and hard work Justin Craig-KuhnTo overcome obstacles is human. When something stands in our way, its Give me liberty or give me death! in many cases. No matter how difficult a project may seem, hard work and determination will pull us through (or at least, thats what we tell ourselves). In many cases, it turns out that we do pull through, beating the odds, feeling a great sense of accomplishment in the process. A case and point of this would be the technological and architectural marvels modern humanity has created. Indeed, this is exactly what is represented in these two works.Memorial Bridge seems to capture the essence of human effort. This nearly impressionistic piece depicts a scene in which workers are constructing a bridge in the foreground. Receding into the horizon is what looks to be a highly industrialized city (for 1932) , with smoke rising into the air from factory smokestacks. The fact that parts of this piece seem to be painted in an impasto fashion, coupled with the rather bland colors that make up the piece, leads to the idea of slow but steady movement. Indeed, when I look at this piece, I feel as though I am included in this group of workers, helping them to overcome the obstacle of constructing this bridge. If the background goes to show what this city has already accomplished, the foreground tells me that the work is still in progress. In fact, I am led to the idea that our work is never done; we continually strive for bigger and bigger challenges. Only our blood, sweat, and tears stand in the way of great material accomplishments.The second painting, by Peters, also represents the idea of human effort. The technique used to paint this picture seems to be very calculated, but simple, hinting that this tectonic painting is about the m...
