Baling Hay at Ganado c. 1933

Mahonri Mackintosh Young made this print called 'Baling Hay at Ganado' using etching on paper. Can you imagine the artist hunched over a plate, scraping lines into the surface? I love the feeling of labor and the everyday captured here. Look at the marks that describe the hay—they’re almost scribbled, frenetic, suggesting movement and energy. The composition is so horizontal, stretching out like the landscape itself. I wonder what Young was thinking about as he made this. Did he grow up on a farm? What's his relationship to manual labor? I can feel the sun beating down. It reminds me a little of Pieter Bruegel. Artists like Young were surely in conversation with Bruegel, even across centuries. It makes you feel like part of something bigger. Every gesture is a link.