Evening Handkerchief 1935 - 1942

Mary Fitzgerald made this drawing, Evening Handkerchief, using colored pencil, and she's created a world of green, a monochromatic marvel. Imagine her, patiently layering those greens, building up the texture, almost like knitting with pencils. It’s got this overall tone that feels quiet, a little melancholic, like a memory fading at the edges. The surface is alive with all these tiny marks, right? You can almost feel her hand moving across the paper, back and forth, back and forth. I wonder if she was thinking about gardens when she made this, or maybe she was just lost in the rhythm of it all. The handkerchief feels like a nod to other artists who explore pattern and repetition, like Agnes Martin or even some of the folk artists I love. It reminds me that art is just one big conversation across time, everybody riffing off each other, finding new ways to say the same old things. And isn’t that beautiful?