Carved Wooden Indian c. 1938

Verna Tallman made this painting of a carved wooden Indian, and who knows when it was made. I am imagining Verna looking at the sculpture, this kind of kitschy and maybe sentimental object, and asking herself how to represent it. The painting is really about translation: how do you represent the three-dimensional in two dimensions? The light brown color gives everything this unifying feeling, and the shadows around the figure make it pop out against the background. Verna is so careful in her choice of colors and precise application, especially in the feathers and fringing of the skirt. You can see her really trying to describe what she is seeing. I wonder if Verna was thinking about her own relationship to this object as she painted it. Artmaking is an endless conversation with the world and with each other.