Brooch 1936

Florence Stevenson made this drawing of a brooch in an unknown year using what looks like watercolor. There’s a lot of detail here, and it’s interesting to me that the artist made both a face-on view of the brooch and a side-on view. To me this demonstrates that the process of drawing is a way to know something. The color palette is quite controlled, with a narrow range of golds, creams and blacks. The artist uses hatching to create the form of the brooch and indicate how light falls on its surface. The little dots of the pearls read almost like a color chart, with subtly different shades of white to indicate the play of light. There is an incredible amount of patience on display here. I’m interested in the precision of the work. It reminds me a little of the work of Agnes Martin, whose grids and lines were always slightly imperfect. We are always looking for the hand in the work, but the personality of the artist is never entirely knowable.