Jacket c. 1937

Lillian Causey, who lived an incredibly long life, made this jacket rendering at some point, and who knows what the medium is, some kind of drawing maybe? What strikes me is how the faintness of the color underscores the intensity of the work, the labor of the details. It's as if the softness is a way to allow these edges to be more prominent. Look at how the lace collar makes its way all around the jacket, it’s such a tactile thing, but in this state, as a drawing, it is all surface, so close to being a diagram, but it’s not, it’s more, it's the feeling of a diagram. It reminds me of the work of Forrest Bess somehow, the way he made paintings that were like instructions, but for dreams, for something just out of reach. Art is often like that, trying to catch something, and maybe Causey was also trying to catch something, a feeling, a memory, a hope.