Chest c. 1941

Eva Perry made this drawing, called ‘Chest’ with brown paint and ink on paper. The object itself is… well, it’s a chest. You can see the artist carefully rendered this very boxy box with a lot of patient hatching. I’m thinking about all those lines, and whether the artist was thinking about light and shadow, or just the sheer will of the thing to *be* a chest. It makes me think about the history of painting itself – its relationship to furniture and interiors; how it helps us to describe, to store, to remember. I wonder if it was pleasurable to make, because there’s a lot of care in the details of the handles, in the rounded legs. Maybe the artist was thinking about all of the paintings in the world, and how to add one more into the conversation? That’s how it feels sometimes, being a painter - adding your voice to the chorus.