Navajo Yei Bo Chi 1932

Helen Farr Sloan made this drawing, Navajo Yei Bo Chi, using graphite on paper. The marks are dense and the image is rich, the tone overall is somber. I love how the artist captured the image as if the viewer is in attendance to the ceremony, the perspective looks up toward the figures. The somber tonality is heightened through the texture created by the mark making, the scratches and hatching on the page have a textural presence, but the light source is not apparent. It’s as if the artist wanted to convey a feeling rather than a sense of accurate lighting. Note the hands of the figures in the background, which look ghostly and disembodied, these hands, like the blank expression on the faces of the figures, add to the feeling of spectral uncertainty. The figures are reminiscent of the paintings of Phillip Guston, particularly the way he drew figures with blank staring eyes. This piece and the wider artistic community, proves that art is a continuing conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, always embracing ambiguity over fixed meanings.