Mahonri Young (1877-1957), Cutting Corn, 1937, oil on canvas, 25 ¼ x 30 inches, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchase/gift of the Mahonri M. Young Estate, 1959.
Autumn, full of warm vibrant colors and poignant ruminations on the cycles of life and death, can be a marvelous season for an artist. In Cutting Corn, Mahonri Young filled the trees with autumnal gold and orange leaves, which mirror the plump orange pumpkins and golden ears of the harvest. Thus the fall of the leaves—the death of one season—is marked by the same beauty as the abundance of the harvest, which will sustain life through the coming winter.