Crock c. 1937

This drawing of a crock by Yolande Delasser is full of tentative lines and a wash of cobalt blue. It gives me the feeling of something ancient, like a Grecian urn, but the bright blue is more contemporary, jolting us into the present. I can imagine Delasser carefully penciling the shape of the crock, then deciding to give us just a hint of what it could be with the blue design at the bottom. Did she want to show us what the finished ceramic might look like, or was she simply playing with the design, letting her intuition guide the brush? It reminds me of the way Agnes Martin would draw grids, not as an end in themselves, but as a way of searching for something, a feeling, a quiet hum. Delasser and Martin, separated by time, connected by the desire to create. That's what painting is all about, don't you think? A conversation across time, between artists, and with ourselves.