Woman's Dress 1935 - 1942

Lillian Causey made this watercolour painting, "Woman's Dress," at an unknown date. The colours are muted, sepia tones and it’s clearly not about the dress as such, but about a gesture, an idea. The dress is almost emerging from the paper, sketched lightly, quickly. It’s as though Causey wanted to capture a feeling, a memory of a figure, or a ghost of a woman and her dress. I think of Guston, with his hooded figures. What was she thinking when she made it? It’s not just a dress, it is about a form with colour and tone, but for me, it is also about a time, or a place in her imagination. Painters are always in conversation with each other, looking and borrowing and changing things around. Causey is having a conversation with all of painting. The dress floats on the page; it’s all possibility, like art itself.