Foot Warmer 1938

Marie Famularo made this drawing of a foot warmer. What’s so appealing is the way that Famularo embraces the worn, slightly rusty texture, turning this utilitarian object into something beautiful. It feels like a celebration of the everyday. There's such care in the rendering of light and shadow. Look at how the colours shift and change across the surface of the metal, the browns blending into blues. The whole thing is composed of tiny marks, all carefully considered, as if this humble foot warmer was a precious jewel, each perforation in the metalwork given its due attention. It reminds me of those old photorealist paintings but with none of the slickness, just a kind of honest appraisal of the object in front of her. It reminds me of the work of some of those early 20th-century American modernists like Charles Sheeler, in the way that it finds beauty in the mundane. But there’s also something very personal and intimate about it, a kind of quiet reverence for the things that surround us.