Week #50, Flower Still Lifes II

Untitled (Floral Still Life in a Green Vase), c. 1935, pastel on paper, 19 ¼” x 15 ½”

This week’s floral still life by Dusti Bongé again is dated to around 1935. Unlike last week’s soft color palette, this work has more robust, earthy tones both in the flowers as well as in the background.

In this particular work one is struck by the quotidian informality of the subject matter. The red and white flowers are loosely arranged in the unadorned green vase, which in turn is sitting on a plain (wooden) table. There is a blueish-green halo around the flowers, most likely just a chair in the background, and there are wilted blossoms that have just fallen off the simple bouquet. Dusti is literally presenting us with a particular moment in her daily life.

What is interesting here is that it seems she drew this pastel on a piece of brown craft paper which she may have recycled or repurposed. There is something telling in the fact that she simply snipped a piece of paper to a manageable size, with scissors, so she could draw on it. The resulting funny, decidedly not-straight, edges of the artwork are not from photographic distortion but are in fact the very unevenly trimmed edges of said piece of paper.

And although rather frustrating to those of us with any degree of OCD**, her lack of concern before or after making the drawing with whether the corners were squared, attests to the fact that she was a true artist. She used whatever materials were readily available to allow her to express her creative drive at the moment that it struck her.

**Yours truly has valiantly resisted the great urge to straighten the work …