August is here and it feels like it. The humidity is like a curtain of water and the heat has been as I remember as a kid during summer. I used to spend all my free time during the summer exploring the countryside along the Des Moines river valley in NW Iowa looking for critters to take pictures of with my camera. I guess the only thing that's really changed is now I drive and don't have as much to carry at one time...oh, and I'm not nearly in as good of shape as I once was :)
I've always been attracted to scenes that evoked some sense of place or of unique design. Agricultural related scenes are always interesting. I've been trying to find some locations in the area to do some plein air paintings of for an upcoming plein air invitational, and one scene I'm really searching out is of summer bales. I'm a sucker for hay bales...not sure why. I was never very good at throwing bales onto the wagon as a kid. It was good short term money for doing it though and I did enjoy climbing around in haylofts! Most bales today are the "big" round ones and not so much like the old familiar rectangle bales I remember best.
I got lucky a couple summers back and saw the perfect picture of a baling scene as I was driving home from the prairie south of here. It's pictured above. It reminded me so much of 40 some years ago, it was a great moment to find and a pleasure to revisit.
I wonder how Monet would have painted rectangular or round bales today, versus hay stacks?
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