Spectacles 1941

Dorothy Dwin's 'Spectacles' are rendered with graphite, and you can almost hear the scratch of the pencil on paper. I’m imagining Dwin, hovering over the page, squinting, drawing, and then squinting again! There is real attentiveness here; each mark has a purpose. Look at the subtle shading around the lenses, the lines so delicate, so precise. There is a sensitivity here, as the artist really looks at the thing she is painting. I'm thinking about Giorgio Morandi, another artist who spent his whole life painting things on his table: bottles and cans. The way he would look at the thing and turn it into something else. The way he could find himself in the object. Dwin and Morandi show us how ordinary things contain a whole world.