Silk with Embroidered Flowers c. 1941

This is Douglas Campbell’s 'Silk with Embroidered Flowers', but when it was made we don't know. The silk ground has been worked on in regular vertical lines, and in the gaps there’s a subtle, faded diamond pattern. What I find so interesting is how the little embroidered posies of blooms disrupt this regularity. Imagine Campbell at work, gently coaxing each thread to life, building up those little mounds of stitches. There’s something so charming about the irregularity of handmade stuff, right? I think of painters like Philip Guston, who embraced the handmade, the imperfect, the clunky. Campbell is doing something similar here, but instead of paint, it’s silk and thread. And instead of grand existential themes, it’s flowers. But both are about a conversation with materials. The history of mark making. The pleasure of messing around. And about finding beauty in the everyday. The result is beautiful, and somehow, deeply touching.