Artists can draw inspiration from anywhere or anything: a colorful sunset, a loving couple snuggled on a park bench, a basket of fruit. In 1930, one artist, driving through a small Iowa town in April, was inspired by something unusual.
Driving past a white-framed clapboard house, he saw a medieval-arched window on the second story. The house’s architectural style was known as Carpenter Gothic, or Rural Gothic. Mesmerized by what he considered “a structural absurdity” on such a simple structure, the young artist that he decided it would make a wonderful backdrop for an American heartland scene he imagined. One might say Grant Wood was “drawn” to the house and what it represented in his artist’s imagination.
