Doll - "Carrie" 1935 - 1942

Hal Blakeley made this watercolour drawing of "Carrie" at some point in his long life. It's a painting of a doll, with a focus on rendering all the frills and lace, the puffed sleeves and layered skirts. The materiality here is all about transparency, a layering of thin washes to build up an image that seems very light and airy. It's so delicate, the whole piece feels like it might float away. Look how Blakeley uses tiny strokes to suggest the texture of the lace, almost as if he were knitting with his brush. The pinks and reds here are soft and muted. It puts me in mind of the doll paintings of Florine Stettheimer, who celebrated the artifice of her social world through painting, but this is much more chaste and humble. You can sense him thinking through the different tonal relationships as he goes. I get the feeling that the process was as important as the final image. Isn’t that true of us all?