[1] As a member of the Dallas Nine, he contributed to developing a stylistic lexicon that captured realistic and unidealized perspectives of the region,[2] shifting away from the “Old South” view of Texas.
[5] Spending time atop the mountain in rural Arkansas sparked his curiosity for the natural world and he claimed that sketching landscapes was his way of “understanding things”.
[5] Outside of schooling and intense labor on the farm, he continued to sharpen his skills in sketching; he soon became known for drawing caricatures of his classmates and sold his work for a nickel apiece.
[2] Upon graduating from Mulberry High School in 1926, Spruce moved to Dallas to attend DAI, despite his father's disapproval of him pursuing art professionally.
[5] His piece Suburban Landscape, and Sumac, by his wife, Alice Kramer, were shown at the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936 among works by other local artists.
[5] Though he received national acclaim early in his career, as movements like Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism emerged, his work slowly faded into oblivion.
[4] Through his deep response to nature, Spruce steered away from the then traditional renderings of Southwestern landscapes by artists like Frank Reaugh, to capture spirituality and discovery.
[5] Unlike many artists during the Great Depression, he did not focus his work on recounting previous American ideals or highlighting social issues of the time; instead, he interpreted how regional nature paralleled the zeitgeist and universal values through themes of abundance, isolation, renewal, and more.
[5] His work presented near-primitive stylized forms;[6] he became known for his angular and distinct renderings of geographical features and flora, which served in alluding to unromanticized and mystic characteristics of the Southwest.
[5] One of his most celebrated works, The Hawk (1939), currently housed at MoMA,[7] has been construed to reference Thoreau’s description of the bird observing spring's arrival, symbolic of Spruce's hope for recovery and renewal after the Dust Bowl.