Armchair 1935 - 1942

This is Ernest Busenbark's 'Armchair,' rendered with paint on paper. The colour scheme is tight; a dark green with almost-black trim. You can see that the artist is going for volume, but the process of image making is right there on the surface; it doesn’t hide what it is. There’s something about the texture of the green that's incredibly inviting, and this is amplified by the precision of the dark line against the paper. The chair legs look to me like some sort of clawed creature. I like this idea, which seems to playfully question its function, by making the chair legs into actual, literal, legs! The way Busenbark balances clean lines with almost smudged colour reminds me of the great outsider artist Bill Traylor, another artist with a canny sensibility who could find beauty and personality in humble objects. I wonder what we bring to the things we choose to make into art?