Forest Iron

A kid in an orange jacket and knitted cap stands at the edge of a flooded gravel pit, holding a plastic shopping bag, staring at a rusting machine that has sunk up to its knees in the mud. The machine has a barrel-shaped head with two dark lenses and two heavy legs, and it is clearly past the point of ever walking again. Everything around it is ordinary: scrubby spruce, yellowing grass, a sand bank cut by rain, puddles reflecting the trees. The strangest thing in the picture gets no more attention from the painter than the weeds do.

Simon Stålenhag is a Swedish artist who built his reputation on exactly this trick, dropping robots, drones and derelict technology into the flat, slightly dreary countryside he grew up with outside Stockholm. His books Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood and The Electric State turned the idea into stories, and Tales from the Loop later became a television series. He trained himself partly by painting birds and nature scenes, which explains why the forest here is so convincing and why the rust on the machine's hull looks like it has sat through a few real winters.

The small detail worth catching is the cable running from the machine's hip off to the right, half buried in the dirt, as if someone once tried to tow it out or tap it for parts and gave up. That, plus the grocery bag in the child's hand, tells you the whole story: this thing has been here long enough to become scenery, and the walk home is more pressing than whatever it used to be.