This work depicts the landscape surrounding Wells' Jacona home. The articulated hills and stylized pinon and juniper dotting the landscape capture the area around this northern New Mexico village at that magical moment of dusk....when the sky is blue, and the land brooding and mysterious, dancing with color before the night arrives. 

Wells' technique creates a mood typical of this late 1930s period. The paper "ground" the work is executed on is fully painted, in comparison to his earliest works in New Mexico of a couple of years earlier which are more calligraphic, sparsely painted works leaving an unpainted white background on which the image dances.  Here the composition is grounded and very present.

"Jacona Evening", circa 1936, relates to "Otowi, Morada and Mesa" in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In both works, Wells juxtaposes a poplar tree in the immediate foreground with the mysterious hills near his home. Both seem immediately accessible, and also unearthly.