Crock c. 1937

Jessica Price made this watercolour drawing, called "Crock," sometime between 1870 and 1930. What strikes me is her interest in the interplay between abstraction and representation, much like my own! Look at the lower part of the drawing – that big, expressive face. It’s as though Price is playfully testing the boundaries between pure form and recognizable imagery. The strokes of blue paint are so immediate and intuitive, forming a face out of simple curves and gestures. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper. And then, above, we have these more schematic, diagrammatic drawings of the crock itself. The contrast is really striking. The face seems to emerge from the same kind of free, improvisational process. It reminds me a bit of Redon's charcoal drawings, where dreamlike images seem to materialize out of the darkness. It's like Price is inviting us to see the potential for figuration in even the most mundane objects.