Pa. German Chair c. 1938

This is Francis Lichten's watercolor of a Pa. German Chair. The colors are muted, like a memory, all browns and tans. The wood grain is carefully rendered, but it’s the soft cushion that really gets me. I can imagine Lichten carefully mixing washes of color to get that worn look. It's like she's reaching out, not just to show us a chair, but to touch something deeper, something about home and history. I wonder if she was thinking about the people who might have sat in that chair, the stories it could tell. You know, painting is like having a conversation with the past, and artists are always listening in on each other's chats, picking up ideas, and adding their own spin. It's a beautiful, messy, never-ending dialogue.