Boots on the Ground

Allen captures her sister and a friend line dancing across a pasture at the 45 Problem Solvers trail ride. Their boots are the only thing visible; one pair decorated with two giant orange bows, the other hidden beneath jeans. He is queer, and she is pregnant, but the boots keep those secrets the way Mississippi keeps secrets, without even trying. What reads as a simple scene of movement and joy is also a painting about coming of age, about doing what you have always done in a place that is slow to change, and about the particular freedom of a body that knows exactly how to dance.