Make Hay While the Sun Shines

This work traces the rhythmic paths left by a tractor moving through a field, where repetition becomes a way of reading the land. Hay bales form a simple pattern across the surface, marking a moment when the landscape slows, turns golden, and holds the long shadows of late afternoon. Shadow is exaggerated and simplified, becoming as present as form.

The painting sits within a complicated affection for agricultural landscapes. These patterns speak to care, sustenance, and necessity, while also pointing to what has been altered or erased, including the ecosystems that existed before the land was shaped for production. The work holds both realities at once, allowing beauty and utility to exist alongside consequence.

The work was made using pigment gathered from my father’s farm, ground by hand into a powder and mixed into a paste. Using material from the site allows the land itself to enter the work, collapsing distance between place, process, and image.