Henry W. Karnes 1905

Henry Arthur McArdle painted this portrait of Henry W. Karnes. The marks and the palette give the piece a feeling of immediacy, like it was knocked out in a single sitting. You can almost smell the turpentine. I find myself drawn to the way McArdle handles the figure’s face, especially around the eyes and cheekbones. There’s a kind of blurred, soft-focus effect, achieved with thin, almost transparent layers of paint. This gives the figure an ethereal quality, as if they are not quite fully present in the space of the painting. And then look how the handling of the hair. It contrasts with the softer tones of the face, giving the portrait a painterly tension. There’s a folk art feel to this piece, and I can imagine that someone like Bob Thompson might have been looking at this kind of work. What’s so cool about art is that every piece is a conversation that stretches across generations. Nothing is ever really resolved, and that’s okay. Ambiguity is where the juice is.