Bag c. 1937

Lillian Causey made this rendering of a bag using watercolour and graphite sometime during her long life. The bag is mostly rendered in shades of grey, with the light and shadow giving it an iridescent, satin-like quality. There’s a looseness to the application, a real sense of Causey feeling her way through the subject. I’m drawn to the almost abstract quality of the bag's body, where the light seems to fracture the form. It's like she's not just depicting an object but also capturing the ephemeral play of light on its surface. Notice too, the little details scattered around the central image, like sketches in a notebook, all adding to the sense of a working process, a mind at play. The careful rendering here reminds me of some of the work of Édouard Vuillard. Both artists seem to revel in the intimate details of everyday life, finding beauty in the mundane. Ultimately, “Bag” invites us to slow down, to observe, and to find poetry in the unexpected.