Trinket Box 1939

Marie Famularo made this watercolor and graphite drawing of a trinket box at an unknown date. Look at the way that she has carefully rendered the details and textures of the box, building up layers of thin washes to create this dark green color. You can see she must have been thinking a lot about volume and light. The box almost looks like a stage set. I bet that when she made this, Marie might have been imagining her favorite little things inside this box - maybe a small rock, a shell, or a tiny piece of paper with a love note. Notice how Famularo’s painting reminds me a bit of those magic realist painters like Peter Doig or maybe even Giorgio de Chirico in that it takes a totally normal object but defamiliarizes it somehow. Like all artists, Marie Famularo was in conversation with other artists and art forms, pulling ideas and inspiration from different places and experiences. This creative cycle is a constant source of new ways of seeing and understanding.