Man's Great Coat c. 1937

Frederick Jackson painted "Man’s Great Coat" with watercolor, and what's interesting to me is how he allows the pale paper to play a role in the rendering of the coat. You can see the light of the paper showing through, and it makes you notice how the paint sits on the surface, almost like a sheer veil. Up close, the colors of the collar look like they have been built up through transparent layers of washy pinks and reds. This approach is a little like how Agnes Martin used the grid. The painting isn't trying to give you an illusion of a coat so much as it asks you to consider the real object and the painted object, or sign, alongside one another. The coat floats like a ghost on the page, and in its simplicity, reminds me of some of the clothing still-lifes made by the Shaker community.