Dress c. 1938

Nancy Crimi made this watercolor painting, *Dress*, and it's full of incredibly detailed, repetitive marks. It feels like she's describing not just a dress, but the *idea* of a dress. The kind of dress that fills your whole field of vision when you're waltzing around a ballroom. Look at the way the pattern’s built up - tiny, almost scribbled lines that create a shimmering effect. It’s not about perfect realism, but about capturing the essence, the *feeling* of the fabric. The dress almost seems to breathe, doesn’t it? The layers of paint give it a texture that's soft, almost inviting, like you could reach out and touch the fabric. That obsessive attention to detail reminds me a bit of the painter Agnes Martin. They both share this interest in the magic of simple repetition and subtle variation. It’s about how something small, when repeated, can create something monumental.