Cigar Store Indian c. 1941

LeRoy Griffith made this watercolor of a Cigar Store Indian, but we don't know when. The colors are really direct: blues, yellows, and browns—not muddy, but clear. It's like the painting is just showing you the recipe for how it was made. Griffith’s paint is super thin, soaked right into the paper, the way you get with watercolor, so it’s all about the surface quality. You can see this especially in the blue shawl—it doesn’t sit on top of the paper. You can still see the paper texture underneath, and there are these pink stripes within the shawl—all working together to make a surface that feels light, almost fragile. Look at the face - it’s like he mapped it out. A simplified way of seeing, which in turn opens another kind of seeing. This reminds me of some of Marsden Hartley’s folk art portraits. Like Griffith, Hartley worked with flat areas of color and simplified forms to create these powerful, iconic images. Art isn't about answers, but about creating an ongoing conversation across time.