The Plough
Paul Newman
The Plough, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
150 x 200 cm
Signed and dated verso
In The Plough, Paul Newman crafts a surreal and contemplative landscape that merges pastoral calm with post-industrial introspection. A white van traces dark, ambiguous tracks across a rolling countryside, leading the viewer’s gaze toward distant cooling towers—monuments of industry rising on the horizon like a modern Stonehenge.
The foreground reveals a slumped, solitary figure embedded in the earth, emitting a thought bubble of mechanical cogs—suggesting a psyche caught between natural immersion and mechanized thought. Twisted trees lean into the composition like silent spectators, their forms stylized and expressive, anchoring the scene in a world that feels both familiar and quietly uncanny.
Executed in Newman’s signature blend of romantic landscape tradition and contemporary surrealism, The Plough meditates on labour, memory, and the spectral presence of industry in the rural imagination. The van—a recurring motif in Newman’s work—stands in for the anonymous traveler, the worker, or perhaps the artist himself, navigating a terrain where history, technology, and nature quietly collide.
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Rebecca Meanly
Abstract Paintings