Jar c. 1937

Yolande Delasser made this painting of a jar, most likely with watercolour, and it’s all about process. The blue decoration on the jar is rendered on the bottom right corner in a larger scale, showing that painting, like pottery, is a form of applied decoration, where the form comes first. Notice how the blue colour is applied to the jar with flat, even tones, but the larger rendering of the design has a more textured and irregular surface, where we can clearly see the brushstrokes and different levels of saturation. The colour is so dense in certain areas that it almost looks velvety, while in others it’s thin and transparent. This reveals how the artist is thinking, experimenting, and allowing the hand to guide the eye. Delasser reminds me of artists like Mary Heilmann, who combine a sense of folk art with modern abstraction. Both these artists are interested in blurring the lines between high and low culture, and embracing the freedom and experimentation of artmaking as a conversation.