Featured image: Autumn Patchwork, Hugh DeWitte, 2025, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in. / 76.2 x 101.6 cm.
Hugh DeWitte’s works The Haymaker: Stewards of thy Bounty, Awaiting the Skate, and Tilth examine the layered histories embedded within agricultural landscapes and rural labor.
Hugh DeWitte creates paintings and assemblages that explore rural landscapes, agricultural history, and land stewardship through layered documents, found objects, and textured compositions.
Combining painting, collage, and assemblage, DeWitte integrates historical documents, found objects, and carefully structured compositions to reflect the relationship between people and the land they cultivate. His work often adopts a bird’s-eye perspective or archival approach, transforming maps, ledgers, and tools into visual narratives about stewardship, memory, and the passage of time. Through these varied materials and formats, DeWitte constructs artworks that function simultaneously as landscapes, historical records, and reflections on rural life.
The Haymaker: Stewards of thy Bounty, Hugh DeWitte, 2024, oil on board, 18 x 16 in. / 45.72 x 40.64 cm.
The Haymaker: Stewards of thy Bounty offers a textured aerial view of farmland constructed from cigar box tops layered with oil-painted paper and pencil markings. The composition resembles a patchwork of cultivated fields, each section marked by subtle tonal variations and handwritten traces that echo historical land records. Small sculptural elements and textured surfaces reinforce the tactile nature of the work, suggesting the physical labor associated with agricultural life. By integrating fragments of written history into the painted surface, DeWitte emphasizes the generational relationship between land and those who have worked it. The work becomes both a map and a memory, revealing how landscapes accumulate human stories over time.
Awaiting the Skate, Hugh DeWitte, 2025, assemblage, 22 x 12 in. / 55.88 x 30.48 cm.
In Awaiting the Skate, DeWitte shifts from painted landscape to assemblage, incorporating antique objects that evoke the rhythms of work and recreation in rural communities. The piece includes 19th-century wooden foundry molds, a handmade pioneer ladle, a French land deed, and a Dutch skate from the turn of the century. Arranged vertically against a dark panel, these objects form a sculptural composition that balances industrial tools with artifacts of leisure. The skate positioned at the bottom introduces the idea of winter play following seasonal labor, while the surrounding objects reference craftsmanship and historical industry. Through this arrangement, DeWitte creates a visual narrative connecting daily work, personal history, and moments of rest.
Tilth, Hugh DeWitte, 2024, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in. / 60.96 x 91.44 cm.
Tilth presents another aerial landscape, this time rendered through layered oil paint and paper on canvas. The composition depicts farmland divided into fields and pathways, creating a geometric network reminiscent of agricultural mapping. DeWitte incorporates historical documents, land deeds, handwritten letters, stamps, and ledger fragments, directly into the painted surface, allowing the written record of ownership and cultivation to merge with the physical depiction of the land itself. The layered textures and pencil markings reinforce the idea that farmland is shaped by generations of planning, labor, and record keeping. The title refers to soil prepared for planting, underscoring the work’s focus on cultivation and stewardship.
Across The Haymaker: Stewards of thy Bounty, Awaiting the Skate, and Tilth, Hugh DeWitte explores the deep connection between landscape, labor, and historical memory. Whether through painted aerial views or assemblages of found objects, his work reveals how rural environments carry the marks of human activity across generations. Documents, tools, and cartographic structures become visual evidence of stewardship and survival. Together, these works present the land not simply as scenery but as a living archive shaped by the lives, work, and traditions of those who inhabit it.
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Cornfield Rows, Hugh DeWitte, 2014, oil and pencil on paper, 26 x 18 in. / 66.04 x 45.72 cm.
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