Lloyd Moylan wrote about the value of stylistic experimentation to an artist’s practice in an essay on public art for the Federal Art Project, and Rural Rococo is evidence that he took his own advice. In the forms of a sky-high cottonwood snag and cotton-ball clouds, Moylan seizes the opportunity to try out the whimsical curves and embellishments of the rococo style of 18th-century France, an ocean and a century removed from his own time. Moylan fully commits to interpreting the Western American landscape through a rococo lens, embracing the style’s attention to detail and fondness for natural motifs. As a finishing touch, he adds delicately rendered figures of common American pastoral birds—chickens, a crow, and a mourning dove.
