Desert Form By Hughie Lee-Smith

For my art research paper, I went to The Art Institute of Chicago. While I was there, I saw a painting that I recently researched during our library day. The painting was called “Desert Forms” created by an American artist Hughie Lee-Smith. My initial reaction to viewing the Desert Forms piece was how small the piece was. There are some very big paintings at the institute and the piece I picked was smaller than what I was expecting. I originally chose the “Desert Form” by Hughie Lee-Smith because the painting intrigued me from its unique shapes and feeling of isolation. Today, with the development of social media and technology; it is easy for teenagers and young adults to feel alone and feel like they do not belong. As a psychology major this piece was interesting from a cognitive perspective as well. The art piece depicts the women who has been isolated, which in psychology the lack of social interaction is directly related to the feeling of loneliness. The subject matter and content at hand in the painting “Desert Form” is; there is some women walking alone in the desert and there is a man in the horizon. The two people are clearly disconnected from each other showing that the subject of the painting is the sense of alienation.
Hughie Lee-Smith painted “Desert Forms” in 1957 with and oil on Masonite approach. According to
The women look to be traveling on her own for quite some time and has yet to find where she belongs. In the painting, she is approaching an outpost that seems to be populated by another traveler. The two of them are both anonymous and seem to have a disinterest in each other. The message Hughie Lee-Smith is sending in this painting is that people need to go on a journey to find themselves before they should try to add someone else in their life. This creates a feeling of being a lost soul and not knowing where you belong in