Cattle Brand c. 1936

J. Henry Marley made this drawing of a cattle brand, and it’s such an odd, interesting little thing, isn’t it? Look at the bold strokes of black ink against the raw paper. Imagine the artist carefully rendering each line. The mark itself looks like a simplified architectural structure with some strange parasitic forms hanging off it. I wonder what it might have been like for Marley to invent a symbol that would be burned into the hides of these animals? You can see a directness and almost brutal clarity. Painting and drawing is also a kind of branding; it’s a way of marking the world with your own language. It resonates with the work of artists like Agnes Martin or Ellsworth Kelly, who explored the beauty and power of simple, geometric forms. Artists are always looking and learning from each other, across time, inspiring one another. Ultimately painting is just another way of understanding the world. It's a back and forth between the maker, the material, and the surface.