Boy's Dress and Jacket c. 1940

Nancy Crimi made this watercolor and graphite work, ‘Boy’s Dress and Jacket’, at an unknown date. What strikes me is how, from a distance, the plaid pattern seems so neat and orderly, but up close, you see that the color is applied so freely, with a real softness. The material quality of this watercolor is really wonderful. The paint is so thin and translucent, it’s almost like looking at a ghost of the pattern. The way the red and white bleed into each other gives it a kind of fuzzy warmth. There's a great sense of flow and give in the way she renders the fabric's folds. Look at the bottom right of the skirt, you can see a pooling of color which gathers in the corner. It reminds me a little of Fairfield Porter's domestic scenes, with their own quiet, intimate, and personal quality. And, like Porter, Crimi shows us that everyday subjects can be so compelling when filtered through a unique artistic vision. Art, like life, is about finding beauty in the unexpected, the imperfect, and the wonderfully ambiguous.