Waistcoat c. 1936

Nancy Crimi made this watercolour painting of a waistcoat sometime between 1855 and 1995. It feels like a labour of love, painstakingly rendered, with its tiny scattered floral pattern. The waistcoat is lightly sketched in pencil, and coloured with thin washes of watercolour. It gives the impression of being very light and delicate, almost as if the waistcoat could float away. But look closer, and the details are what make the piece. See how the edging is a darker blue, anchoring the floating waistcoat to the surface of the paper. It makes me think of Agnes Martin and her use of light and delicate line to create expansive spaces, but here, there's something about the domesticity of the subject matter, the waistcoat as a familiar, everyday object that brings me back down to earth. And yet, it also brings a certain kind of charm and quiet to this painting.