Branding Iron c. 1942

Curator: Welcome! We're looking at Elizabeth Johnson's watercolor drawing "Branding Iron," created around 1942. The piece depicts exactly that: a rusty metal branding iron, laid horizontally. Editor: My initial impression is one of stark simplicity. The subdued color palette, combined with the plain presentation, really draws attention to the raw materiality of the iron. You can almost feel the heat it would generate. Curator: Absolutely. Consider the context: Johnson, a woman artist working in a time of vast social upheaval, chooses to document such a specific, arguably mundane, object. This is about claiming space, documenting labor, and forcing the viewer to acknowledge the realities of agricultural life, its reliance on physical objects. It subverts expected gender roles through her depictions of traditionally masculine spaces. Editor: Right, and there's an interesting tension here. The subject, the branding iron, is so obviously about control, ownership, and the labor of ranching. But the watercolor medium feels delicate, almost vulnerable. The work highlights process: how is the object itself produced? What are the working conditions that created the necessity for this tool? Curator: I'd agree. Moreover, this symbol, and the very act of branding, carries a weighty history. Its embedded in the violence enacted on the cattle, and it reflects a power structure extending to race and land ownership in that era. To display it with what one might view as a straightforward illustration—that tension reveals a starker commentary. Editor: I find the plain presentation fascinating; there’s no romanticizing. It almost becomes a readymade, an elevation of the everyday object. Johnson’s technique renders labor tangible through the detailed study of this one specific object, urging us to think of artmaking as connected to that same production. Curator: Exactly! This quiet declaration really makes you think about art, labor, and the narratives we choose to represent, especially regarding identity and societal positionality. Editor: I will be sure to contemplate it with the same meticulousness with which Johnson seems to have engaged in the process of art-making herself.