American Gothic

The three-tined pitchfork, the round wire glasses, the black jacket over a striped collarless shirt, and beside him the woman in a brown printed apron with a cameo at her throat, looking off to one side. Grant Wood painted it in 1930 in front of a white timber farmhouse with a pointed Gothic window, using his sister and his dentist as the models.

Faces and hands go in early; the white clapboard house and the plain pale sky behind are the flat sections that slow it down. Finished size 68 x 51cm.