The sun is peculiarly golden just at sunset. The level rays strike the sidewalk and turns it to a sheet of gold...
A calm heavy downpour lasting from about 4:00 to 7:00. This marks the first rain this summer that has come without a thunderstorm.
In studio most of the day – readying up, sorting out notes etc. – It is discouraging to me to come across notes and ideas I had forgotten – discouraging because they suggest good pictures and yet...
About noon Harold Olmsted & his son-in-law Roderick in for a visit...One thing he wrote was that had I never painted such a thing as my “Mid-June” the world would have lost much.
A wonderful sunset to-night—one of beautiful colors. I had taken Thoreau’s Autumn and gone out on the porch. I was first attracted to the sky by a phenomenon connected with it.
Dark starry sky with the milky way unusually clear; deep silence with the exception of the constant [rhythmic] chorus of myriad tree crickets,which sound like the steady thrum thrum of the human heart.
To most laymen art is either a means of earning a living, or a pastime. They do not realize it is life itself. They do not comprehend that the artist paints not from a desire, but because he must.
To the North Otto Grange Hall painting – we took food for both noon and evening, as I expected to work up to 6:00 or later...
A silver poplar on Garfield is studded with white blossoms. A mirage? No - the breeze has only ceased for an instant.
I was all “primed” to paint in the studio, but the lure of truancy was too much – I suggested taking our lunch out to the Maples on the Townsend Road, and Bertha was all for it –