A cow yearns for water, rib cage taut against its dusty, dry skin. It leans over the water trough only to discover nothing but dust as a vulture watches overhead, waiting for its prey to die. Thus Alexandre Hogue’s Drouth Stricken Area forces its audience to empathize with a desperate scene in Texas during the Great Depression. (http://tamupress.blogspot.nl/2013/07/texas-artexas.html) In Hogue’s 1934 painting Drouth Stricken Area, line, texture, and balance all allude to his views on the ecological environment of the 1930s. On the right side of the painting is a strip of land that points back to the horizon line; the line that is created here allows the eye to move from the busy foreground to the barren background. The horizon line and background are completely void of life except for the windmill structure in the far distance. This allows the viewer’s eye to travel along that line to understand the vastness of the damage done to the land by its inhabitants. Also along this line are stumped posts, covered by wind-eroded soil. This references the erosion that contributed to the infertility and uselessness of the soil. The audience is drawn to these covered posts by the line that is formed by the newly eroded soil. Hogue also utilizes texture to illustrate the state of the land in the Dust Bowl. In the foreground, the soil has a dry, cracked texture, clearly showing the lack of moisture in the ground. This drought-induced texture, however, is centered on man-made structures. The background has almost no structures, and the land is smooth. The foreground is clustered with houses, gates, and a windmill and this is where the ground is the driest. Here, Hogue is blaming people for the drought and Dust Bowl. In terms of composition, almost all of the objects are placed in the direct foreground. This not only distances man from nature, but also creates a vast landscape that is filled with nothing at all. The lack of any defining marks from the middle to the background create a desolate, empty and barren space. This, once again, is Hogue commenting on the state of the land and the level of destruction done by people. DeLong argues that the single windmill on the horizon line in the distance makes the space look even more empty and barren. She also notes that farm and the cow have clearly been left to dry out by careless humans. Compared to photography of this time, Hogue’s painting instead instills anger towards humans instead of empathy for their unfortunate situation. Hogue has commented, however, that his paintings are not meant to be negative exactly, but instead to point out the benefits of preserving the land. Drouth Stricken Area is an example of psychoreality, in which Hogue uses certain images to highlight the reality of the situation. By exaggerating the vast landscape, starving livestock and skyscraper windmill, Hogue is forcing people to consider the reality that he sees. This is the premise of psychoreality, or, thinking about the reality of a situation because of the magnified items presented. Psychoreality distorts the realism that Hogue was known for, yet it still got his ecocentric message across. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Hogue#Drouth_Stricken_Area)