A circa 1940's or early 1950's print of the famous Jerry Bywaters 1940 painting "Oil Field Girls", measuring " by " inside the mat and " by " framed.  On an old strip of tape affixed to the backing is written in ink "Oil Field Girls: Jerry Bywaters".  The capital block letters resemble the artist signature so one wonders if perhaps the artist himself wrote that.  This appears to be perhaps what might be called an offset lithograph; dots visible under close examination.  Bywaters, 1906-1989, was an important Texas artist, educator, museum director and art critic and historian from about the early 1930's.  After meeting Diego Rivera in 1928, he attended art schools in Old Lyme, Connecticut and at the Art Students League in New York under John Sloan, who advised him to return to the Southwest to paint.  Back in Dallas, he became one of the "Dallas Nine", and a "Lone Star Regionalist".  He directed the Dallas Museum of Fine Art for a number of years and became a fixture in the Texas art scene.  His 1940 painting "Oil Field Girls" now hangs at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.  A critic analyzed the painting, finding its possible hidden meanings and symbolism:   

"Jerry Bywaters’s Oil Field Girls is a work of incredible moral complexity. We see two women standing on the roadside. One wears a black dress that clings to her body. Her black heels, necklace, and the feathered hat covering her blonde hair suggest a life of luxury, but her situation tells us otherwise. Her companion appears more demure, with a bow in her dark hair and wearing a yellow skirt and a belted white blouse. The red of her belt is picked up in the bracelet at her right wrist and her western-style boots. She holds her white hat in her hands, and we notice a suitcase and hatbox at her feet. Upon closer inspection, we see that both women have brightly painted cheeks and lips, and heavily made-up eyes. Their exaggeratedly long legs and tightly fitting clothing give them an imposing presence.

Many scholars believe that the women are meant to be prostitutes. But if this is the case, Bywaters reserves judgment. He presents the women as a fascinating convergence of power, drive, and desperation. In fact, Bywaters himself said that he intended to create a work of “sympathetic caricature.” The women look into the distance in anticipation, waiting for someone, or anyone, to take them away from where they currently are. Once we look at the landscape, we can see why: pulling our gaze down the winding road are white posts and a traffic sign warning us of a curve ahead (perhaps one of many “dangerous curves” depicted here). We move past a sign for Jax beer, the ramshackle Joe’s Garage, and ultimately into burning oil fields where a growing plume of smoke stretches across the sky and behind the women’s heads, acting as a frame.

Jerry BywatersSome of us may have found ourselves on desolate roads much like the one depicted here. Bywaters in fact developed his idea for this painting while driving through West Texas. Yet, embedded in the recognizable landscape are symbolic elements that infuse the scene with additional meaning: on the left side of the road, hanging on the storefront of Joe’s Garage is a sign that reads “666,” a number often associated with demonic forces. Among discarded tires on the far right side of the painting is an abandoned piece of machinery with “Jesus Saves” scrawled across it, barely visible behind a sign for Hattie’s Hut, a honky-tonk where truckers are invited to enjoy the “dine and dance” on offer.

Jerry BywatersWhat are we to make of these contrasting references to heaven and hell? Is Bywaters commenting on the irony of industrialism? How the hellishness of the oil fields coexists with messages of Christian morality? That people eagerly await the Last Judgment as the sky above them burns? What role do the two women have here? Does the stark contrast of their clothing—dark on the left, light on the right—serve as an additional sign of the opposing forces at play? It is interesting that they are looking for travelers headed towards the oil fields—and therefore towards 666—intentionally moving beyond any hope of being saved. They seem to stand at the mouth of hell, waiting for a traveler to take them past salvation to the point of no return. That “Jesus Saves” is so obscured by a honky-tonk sign perhaps suggests that such promises of deliverance are overpowered by a new message of materialism in the wake of the Texas oil boom, illustrated by the billboards that have sprouted along the roadside.

When we delve into the details of Bywaters’s painting, we see that his landscape is as much a character as the two women. The natural world “speaks” in this work, telling us of a land altered by industry and the courage of those who would enter such a place. The two women, giantesses on the West Texas roadside, perhaps symbolize the spirit needed under such new circumstances. In abandoning the gentle comforts of traditional life, where Jesus saves, and choosing to venture into the unknown, where potential encounters with darker forces await, they demonstrate the resilience and sheer nerve required to survive in a transformed world."

Bibliography

Francine Carraro. Jerry Bywaters: A Life in Art. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1994.

Jerry Bywaters. Letter to Tammy Fuller Gest. 14 December 1984.