Already established as a commercial printmaker, Harold E. West credits the New Deal for launching his career in painting. Producing work for New Mexico’s Federal Art Project in the late 1930s, he quickly became well known for images of “frontier” life—cowboys, homesteads, ranch animals. In this painting, expert horsemen kick up dust as they race through a range of grass and rabbitbrush. West captures their speed and agility in a blur of brushstrokes and evokes the sensations of a loud stampede of hooves, whooshing air, and an adrenaline-charged shout.
