Cameo Brooch c. 1936

Grace Halpin's "Cameo Brooch" presents a delicate rendering of a vintage jewelry piece, likely created with pencil and watercolor. Look at the considered linework used to capture the brooch's details! Can you imagine her process? Working delicately, she would be building up the forms and surfaces of the object, letting the pencil marks accumulate and define the image. The brooch, depicted in a few views, is almost like a diagram or study. There's the main profile, the metal setting, the clasp and pin. I notice the way Halpin has given the cameo a warm, subtle flesh tone, so that the figure almost comes alive from the flat surface. It reminds me a little bit of the work of Vija Celmins, who also made detailed, almost documentary style images of everyday objects. The act of drawing or painting, for me, is like an exchange across time. Halpin's focus on this intimate, historical object makes me think about art as a space of conversation, where artists draw inspiration and ideas from one another.