Cattle Brand c. 1936

This stark black drawing of a cattle brand by J. Henry Marley feels like a kind of personal heraldry, done with what looks like simple house paint, maybe even a brush made from found materials. I can imagine Marley really getting into this project, maybe even obsessing over it, as if it were a key to some secret code. The shapes are so direct and unpretentious. There's that strong horizontal bar at the top, anchored by the confident vertical stroke, contrasted with those softer, curvy elements below, almost like stylized animal horns. I start to wonder, what kind of statement was Marley trying to make here? It feels so deliberate. It reminds me a little of some of those early twentieth-century American modernists, like Marsden Hartley, who were also drawn to simple, geometric forms. I can imagine him figuring it all out in his head, maybe in the barn, the smell of hay, the cows lowing. Ultimately, all painting is just one big conversation between artists, reaching across time and space. It’s less about answers, and more about the questions we ask.