Cigar Store Indian c. 1937

Walter Hochstrasser's 'Cigar Store Indian' is painted in watercolour, a tricky medium. Imagine how he might have built up the form of this figure, stroke by delicate stroke, patiently layering the washes of brown and red. I wonder what Hochstrasser was thinking about as he painted? The history of these figures is fraught with all kinds of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation, and he may have been questioning his role in perpetuating a problematic image. Or maybe he was simply interested in the play of light and shadow on the carved figure. Look at the way he has rendered the feathers, for example, with their soft, blurred edges. It’s this kind of attention to detail, to the subtle nuances of form and color, that makes the work so compelling. It invites us to consider not only the figure itself but the artist’s engagement with it. Painting's not just about what you see but also about how you see it and how that vision is brought into being.