The Mysterious Artist

 

I did a post on my Phoenix Daily Photo site about this painting last year after I saw it at the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson.  I immediately fell in love with the painting.  The artist is Minda Hess who was born in 1906 and that is pretty much all that I've been able to discover about her.  A search found three other paintings attributed to her that appear on auction sites but I can find no biography of the artist herself.  Even her date of death is unknown.  It's like she simply disappeared. 

The painting is called "Le Grande Place" and it was painted in 1958.  The highest recorded price ever paid for one of her paintings was $1,000.  This particular painting was a gift to University Museum.  

I simply love the painting and feel it deserves another appearance.  I just wish I knew more about the artist. 

The Dust Bowl

 

I saw this painting at the University of Arizona Art Museum two years ago.  I remember studying it carefully trying to figure out what was going on in the painting.  The painting's title is "Avalanch by Wind" and it was painted by Alexandre Hogue (1898-1994).  

Hogue was born in Missouri but raised from a very young age in Texas.  His mother taught him about "Mother Earth" which became a theme in his artwork.  Today we would call him an environmentalist because of his steadfast dedication to preservation of the land.  This painting was part of a series he painted that was called the Erosion Series.  Those paintings all had to do with the dust bowl era, a period during the Great Depression where the land was laid bare from over use and drought which Hogue believed was driven by human actions.

In this painting you see a storm building up that has caused heavy winds that have forced the dirt and sand over the railroad tracks. In the background we see a train coming and a lone man trying desperately to warn the engineer of trouble ahead.

There is a five minute video discussing this painting here.