Woman Doll in Buckskin c. 1938

George File made this drawing of Woman Dolls in Buckskin at an unknown date with graphite and watercolor. The way File handles the paint – almost dry, it looks like – gives everything a soft, worn texture that makes me want to reach out and touch it. It's artmaking as a kind of slow, careful building, a process of feeling out the form. I'm really drawn to the red sash. It's the only pop of real color, and the way it's tied so simply around the waist feels both practical and kind of elegant. The paint is thin, almost transparent, in places, which lets the white of the paper peek through and gives it a sense of light. You can almost see the ghost of the graphite lines underneath, like a secret map of the artist's thinking. File’s approach reminds me a little of Bill Traylor, another artist who found beauty in simplicity and repetition. Like Traylor, File shows us how much you can say with just a few colors and a steady hand. Art, in the end, is always a conversation, a back-and-forth across time and space.