Dress c. 1937

Nancy Crimi made this watercolour drawing of a dress sometime in the twentieth century. The approach to mark making is what first grabbed my attention here – the way that Nancy builds up each little rose and leaf with such care, such attention. You get the sense of artmaking as a real process, each detail emerging slowly. There’s a kind of loving focus in the rendering of the dress that really sings. The fabric seems to glow, doesn’t it? It's almost like she's trying to capture not just how it looks, but how it feels to touch. Check out the detail on the sleeves, how the lace drapes! Each little fold and ruffle is given its own life. Look at the way she’s handled the shadow. It’s so subtle, like a whisper. It reminds me a bit of the drawings of fashion designs by Andy Warhol, where you can feel a love for the object shining through. But in this piece, there's a tenderness, a vulnerability, that really gets under your skin. It's a drawing of a dress, but it's also so much more.