Oil Field Girls

Jerry Bywaters enjoyed a long and multifaceted career as an artist, writer, teacher, and museum director. He is best remembered today for his participation in the Dallas Nine, an enterprising group of young painters active in the 1930s who helped establish a regional identity for Texas art. Their paintings portray local conditions in expressive detail even as they acknowledge a wide range of influences gained from the artists’ studies in New York, Mexico City, and Europe. In Oil Field Girls, Bywaters used a somber palette to describe the desolate west Texas landscape. By contrast, the women poised to hitch a ride out of those bleak environs are vivid and forceful; although they are most likely working as prostitutes, Bywaters made no apparent judgment of them, instead vesting them with vitality and ambition. A mixture of reportage and editorial commentary, Oil Field Girls captures a surprisingly humane narrative of a specific time and place.