Cigar Store Indian c. 1936

Bisby Finley, made this watercolor painting, Cigar Store Indian, sometime in the 20th century; it's a study of form, and a celebration of color and process. Finley uses a dry brush technique to catch the rough carved texture of the original wooden figure; it's like he's trying to get under the skin of the thing, to feel its presence through the paint. The reds and browns aren’t just colors, they’re stand-ins for the feel of wood and the deep shadows of the carving. Look at the way he's rendered the feathers, each stroke like a chisel mark, shaping the form with light and shadow. You can almost hear the rasp of the wood. It reminds me a little of Milton Avery, who also had a way of collapsing form and color into something immediate and felt. This piece invites us to think about how we see and feel the objects around us, how art can pull the world apart and put it back together again, in a way that's both strange and deeply familiar.