Jug c. 1936

Yolande Delasser made this drawing of a jug with watercolor and graphite, and it feels like the jug itself is just emerging onto the page. The whole thing has a provisional quality, like it's a sketch for something else. The artist probably started out with a light outline in graphite, and then she built up the image with layers of transparent washes. Look at the bird, it is a block of ultramarine blue. I can imagine her dabbing the brush on the page, allowing the water to bleed and create soft edges. I can see the surface and the build-up of the pigment. The jug is there only as a suggestion, a ghost of a jug. But it is still a jug. Sometimes the feeling of the thing is enough. It reminds me that painting is always an act of translation. We’re turning something that exists in the world into something else, something new. And then other painters see that new thing and turn it into something else again.