Dress 1935 - 1942

Edna C. Rex has painted this yellow dress with watercolor. I wonder if she owned this dress, or if it lived in her imagination? I’m really taken by the way she’s handled the light. It's as if she's searching for a way to represent not just the color, but the feeling of sunshine on fabric. It is not photorealistic and the painterly application of washes of thin paint gives the dress its volume and shape. I can imagine Edna, brush in hand, really thinking about each stroke, each layer of color, and how they might come together to capture the essence of this dress. It makes me think about other artists, like Fairfield Porter, who found so much beauty in the everyday. Painting is like a conversation across time, where we’re all responding to each other’s attempts to capture something elusive, something real. And in the end, what matters most is the feeling it evokes, the way it makes us see the world a little differently.