Puppet - "Clown on a Tear" c. 1937

Verna Tallman gave us this watercolor of a puppet, “Clown on a Tear,” and it’s kind of like a recipe for making a little bit of chaos. The colours here are muted, a melancholic grey, punctuated by bursts of bright red trim like he’s bleeding joy. You can see Tallman’s hand in the washes of paint, thin and watery, allowing the paper’s surface to breathe. Look closely at the clown's face – the way the paint is applied so delicately, building up the features with gentle strokes. This isn’t about hiding the process; it’s about revealing it, letting the materials speak their own language. The zig-zagging frills feel like the clown’s emotions, raw and exposed. It reminds me of Ensor’s masked figures, that same sense of unease lurking beneath the surface of the spectacle. Art invites us to see the world not as it is, but as it could be – messy, ambiguous, and full of feeling.