A Finger on the Drum 1940

Kay Sage’s 'A Finger on the Drum' is an oil on canvas painting that really messes with your sense of space, and your sense of touch too. There’s this smooth, almost airbrushed quality to the surfaces, like you could reach out and feel the cool, polished stone. But then, the landscape stretches out in a way that feels both vast and claustrophobic. It’s like being in a dream where the rules of perspective are bent, and everything is just a little bit off. Look at that slender, draped form on the left, it's so tactile. It reminds me a bit of Giorgio de Chirico, another artist who knew how to make the ordinary feel deeply strange. The way Sage uses light and shadow to create these stark, geometric forms, it’s like she’s building a stage set for some kind of existential drama. And maybe that’s what painting is, right? A way of creating new worlds, and new ways of seeing the ones we already inhabit.