Chest of Drawers c. 1938

Charles Henning made this chest of drawers sometime in the 20th century using watercolor, graphite, and colored pencil on paper. It's so easy to imagine Henning bent over his work, meticulously building up the texture with tiny marks. The drawers themselves are a dark moody green, and the edges are decorated with red and gold stripes, like some kind of geometric code. And then those little floral flourishes, punctuating each drawer – I wonder if he worked from life, or from memory? Each flower is a little different, a little wonkier. It makes me think about how we learn from each other, steal from each other, how we try something out, mess it up, start again. It's like he's channeling this deep, long conversation that artists have been having for centuries. Painting lets us stay in that messy, uncertain space, where things don't have to be perfect to be meaningful.