Cigar Store Indian c. 1937

Charles Bowman’s painting of a Cigar Store Indian feels like a memory of a memory. The layers of watercolor create this sense of distance, with earthy browns and reds doing all the work. Up close, you see a real process at play; how Bowman teases out texture with thin washes, almost like staining the paper. The feathered headdress has this wonderful translucence to it, achieved by layering different colors on top of one another – pinks, blues, greens. There is a sense of the artist trying to emulate the wood carvings these figures were based on. But it's the gaze that gets me, that hand shielding the brow. What is she looking towards? Or away from? Her stance gives a sense of waiting, or watching. It makes me think of Joseph Stella, and his industrial landscapes, where the past and the future meet in these weird, unresolved ways. Ultimately, this work acknowledges the strange and unsettling history of such figures. It’s all there in the layers, if you take the time to look.