Watching Woman

Rebecca Salsbury James’s work incorporated unconventional media for modernist artists, including colcha embroidery and reverse painting on glass, which offers sharp edges, a lack of surface texture, and a luminosity unattainable with paint on canvas. Largely self-taught, James would come to master the medium. She created foreground details first on the reverse side of the glass and worked backwards until the composition was complete. Watching Woman is an enigmatic image that may be among her earliest experiments with reverse painting on glass. The woman may be a part of a penitente ceremony as she stands next to a large crucifix used in penitente rituals. James often employed a naïve style in presenting forms as if to acknowledge the history of reverse painting in the folk tradition.