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Kenneth Adams followed his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art
Students League, and Woodstock, by moving to the art colony of Taos,
New Mexico. But financial exigencies drove him to take a teaching job
at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He was delighted to
have an opportunity to join the Federal Art Program as an easel
painter in 1934: not only did the federal government pay more money;
it also gave him the freedom to paint full-time, which is what he
really wanted to do. He returned to Taos, after which he received a
commission to paint a mural for Goodland, Kansas.
Unlike some of the Post Office mural painters of the 1930s, Adams
was given a free hand in his work. There was no input from the local
Postmaster, and no restrictions on his content or style. He chose an
important local historical theme: the advent of Rural Free Delivery.
This program, which the federal government began in 1896, was probably
the most significant program ever developed for America's rural
population, with the possible exception of Rural Electrification in
the 1930s. Rural Free Delivery brought mail service to far-flung farms,
where previously farmers would have had to travel to possibly distant
post offices to post or receive mail. It also opened up a whole area
of commerce, with the possibility of mail orders and - with the
institution of parcel post service - the delivery of these orders
through the mail.
Adams's work is Cubist-inspired, although it was never so adventurous
as to attract the criticism of an often conservative public. His Goodland
painting is notable for its bright colors and for the modeling of his
figures, with a nod to the geometric forms these figures suggest.
The overall aspect of his composition is very pleasing, which is
exactly how the public viewed the mural when it was first displayed.
Elements of the painting relate directly to the local environment.
There is a farmstead in the distance, with the farmer and his extended
family in the foreground. A fence is lined with sunflowers, the state
flower of Kansas and an important local commodity. Indeed, Goodland
was chosen as a locale for the Big Easel project, which constructed a
gigantic reproduction of a Van Gogh sunflower painting for Goodland's
downtown. The mailman is driving a small horse-drawn cart. More
typically, a larger, enclosed vehicle was in use, but for far-flung
locations, smaller vehicles were employed, as shown in Adams's painting.