One of my favorite paintings is Christina’s World (check it out at MoMA if you can!), depicting a young woman in a field, her body twisted by a muscular condition, crawling towards — or perhaps just gazing at — a farmhouse in the distance. It’s a quiet, beautiful, unsettling image, evoking longing and loneliness, struggle and resilience.

Some of those same qualities can be used to describe “Dark on a Sunny Day,” the title track of Maisy Owen’s forthcoming debut. Whether coincidental or not, the cover art bears a resemblance to Andrew Wyeth’s 1948 painting. And it too leaves us with some questions, though Owen’s figure is not plagued by illness and appears more at ease and inviting. Resting against the house, she looks directly at us — the listener.

Maisy Owen is a young singer-songwriter from Nashville, rooted in a tradition mapped out by artists like Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Bridget St John and Vashti Bunyan. It’s fair to say that sparse, fingerpicked folk music is her home base, though it feels like this is the sound of an artist in the making. She’s clearly carving out her own path, and one that will be interesting to follow.

“Dark on a Sunny Day” has evolved over recent months (based on earlier YouTube clips) into an electric, steady, minimalistic band-driven piece, underpinning Owen’s angelic whispers and haunting poetry. It’s all wonderfully assembled, the sound of a magnetic new voice for tomorrow echoing the hopes and struggles of that painting. This is Maisy’s world.