Woman's Shoes c. 1936

Lillian Causey made this watercolor, titled "Woman's Shoes," on paper at some point in her long life. Look at how the blue and white patterned shoes are rendered; they're floating, and they're also flat, like cut-outs. Causey’s linework has this shaky quality, and the pink lining just sits on top of the shoe form. It's like she’s mapping out an idea of a shoe rather than trying to trick us into seeing a realistic one. The beauty of the painting comes from this raw, unrefined quality and the color. See how the blue echoes the pink? It makes the work sing, formally speaking. I see parallels between her work and that of Bill Traylor, another artist who started late in life and embraced a very direct, unfussy kind of picture-making. To me, these two shoes aren't just pretty; they’re like portraits. There's an honesty, maybe a vulnerability, that makes me care about them as if they were people.