This season is one day a cool layer-sky with rain or wind; and another day a brilliant hot sunlit day with vivid patterns of plants –
Summer attains its greatest dignity & power in August. In this dignity & power exist simultaneously a sinister quality, and a deeply mystical one. On one hand in point of time, is the luxuriant beauty of full-growing things, on the other, the lucid romanticism of Autumn.
Had intended working on the “App. Highway”, but somehow switched to the “July Drought Sun” – As the afternoon progressed
I think of myself, artist-wise, as being a perfectly happy man, living in an environment that is exactly suited for me.
“Nighthawks” needs no comment I guess, I love to see them frolicking in the vanguard of a storm – I think they must use the swirling eddies of wind as we do sliding places. How I envy them – if there were anything at all to the theory of evolution (which I doubt very much) man would long ago have developed wings. And I love the eeriness of a woods at nightfall.
In Painting, as much idea of the immensity of the sky can be given by showing a very small area as by showing a large amount.
I saw a new Nature today—It was more wild—less sophisticated than the sketches I have been making—
An all side the cicadas & grasshoppers were starting their jarring rhythms. I had the pleasure of seeing an amphibian plane take off from the river below.
Yesterday and today, very warm humid weather, the air full of thick bluish white haze, the sky a brassy yellow. For an hour or so both morning and evening the sun a glowing ball of red, and at mid-day like melted brass, or gold.
A wonderful dream I had early this morning. I was, as is my custom of watching the progress of the weather all day.