In general terms, New Deal art programs sought to create a visual record of American life and American spirit. Artists across the country were deployed to document their communities, and Storage Barn is part of that rich tapestry of “the American scene.” Here, Lloyd Moylan memorializes a specific place at a specific moment in time. The artist must have known this particular subject well to have rendered it with such precision. Notice the six-paneled windows, the water trough slightly askew, and the individual blades of grass—even the weed poking up on the left edge of the building. Something outside the picture to the left casts an elongated, funnel-shaped shadow up the side of the barn and across its roof. Moylan also pays attention to each slope, plane, and crevice of the uniquely formed mountain towering over the barn.
