Gold Is Where You Find It
1934
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
Accession Number
1965.18.49
Tags
About this artwork
This painting thrusts the viewer deep into a California gold mine where a sweating miner braces one foot against his powerful pneumatic drill. He is wedged into a crevice, boring holes that will be stuffed with dynamite, which will blast open new sections of the gold vein. California painter Tyrone Comfort brings the viewer uncomfortably close to this miner, stripped to his shorts and work boots in the suffocating heat of the mine. The vibrating drill fills the narrow space with jarring noise an...