Jug c. 1938

This watercolour and graphite drawing, Jug, probably started with an idea, maybe sketched from life, but then something else took over. Delasser’s process of layering washes must have felt like excavation, with each layer revealing something new. I can imagine Delasser standing at her easel, turning the paper this way and that, searching. Maybe she was thinking about form, line, colour. The jug, lightly sketched, floats above a brown rectangle, within which a bird-like form hovers. The paint is thinly applied, allowing the paper to breathe. It's a playful back-and-forth between intention and accident. It is this conversation, so deftly handled, that makes me think of other artists like Marsden Hartley, with his simplified forms and emotional intensity. Ultimately, artists are magpies, borrowing and stealing from each other across time. Delasser’s Jug is just one piece of this ongoing dialogue, a testament to the enduring power of painting as a mode of inquiry and embodied expression.