ART AND POSTAGE STAMPS

Farmersville’s 1939 post office offers heritage travels a little more than a place to purchase postcard stamps. Inside, a mural by Texas artist Jerry Bywaters represents a bit of the community’s (and the country’s) past. Called “Soil Conservation in Collin County” and painted after the Dust Bowl removed the top soil from much of the country’s breadbasket, the mural illustrates contour plowing, a technique used to counter earlier methods that contributed to the Dust Bowl devastation. Bywaters painted several post office murals across the state, courtesy of the Works Administration Program, a Depression-era program designed to put Americans back to work, including artists. Born in the nearby community of Paris, Bywaters arrived in Farmersville to paint the mural in 1941, already a successful member of the region’s art community. His stylized realism, considered by art historians as the American Scene movement, can be seen in a significant body of landscapes, still-life and portrait paintings, lithographic prints, and his numerous public murals. Bywaters’ work hangs in the Dallas Museum of Art as well as important university and private collections statewide. In 1980, nine years before his death, Bywaters was honored by the Texas Art Alliance for his distinguished service to the arts.