A silhouetted pumpjack holds steady in mid-cycle, its head and counterweights balanced against the open prairie. Shot from a frontal angle, the image flattens both machine and landscape into simplified forms. The wheat field is rendered in tan, the sky a solid blue, and the entire frame is lightly screened with Ben-Day dots—an echo of mass reproduction techniques that reduce complexity into clean lines and halftones.

Prairie Mechanic captures the moment between motion—neither lifting nor descending—offering a quiet metaphor for pause in a system built on repetition. Where Downstroke isolates the machinery in action, this image reflects a more measured persistence, suspended mid-task. The pumpjack remains solitary, embedded in the prairie, framed by simplicity. It toils in rural silence, far from the urban centres its produced oil ultimately serves—its rhythm steady, its presence largely unnoticed, its work to fuel our daily lives ongoing.