Silk Waist c. 1939

Fred Hassebrock made this drawing of a silk waist with graphite and crayon. The color is just so…blue! It's a blue that feels kind of vintage, faded a little, like an old photograph. The way he's rendered the fabric is really interesting. You can almost feel the crinkle and the way the light hits it. It's like he's not just drawing a shirt, but also the idea of a shirt, capturing its texture and the way it hangs on the body. Look at the sleeves and how they have this rounded, balloon-like quality. It reminds me of some of Philip Guston's later paintings where the objects have this heavy, almost cartoonish feel. I like to think that Hassebrock, like Guston, was interested in exploring the everyday, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. These are artists who invite us to see the world with fresh eyes, to appreciate the beauty and strangeness of the things that surround us.