The name of this painting is 'American Gothic' and was painted by Grant Wood in 1930. It is a painting of a farmer standing with his pitchfork in hand and a woman, supposedly his sister, beside him, they stand in front of a house with what looks like a barn beside it. For me, it gives this odd feeling, thoughts like "Why aren't they smiling?" and "Why were they painted so close?" come up. I interpret that the houses behind them also represents the people in front, and maybe the painter didn't mean it like this. The woman is by the left of the farmer, dressed as if she more likely tends to the house and men rather than in the barn and farm. The house behind is white, which also looks like the stereotypical house in some suburban neighbor hood, where a family with a kid or two living inside with their pet dog or something. Moving on to the farmer, it is as if the barn behind him represents him. Surely, this was not asked but I just wanted to add it in. I think this is called symbolism.
I myself paint and consider painting to be therapeutic and a way of finding peace in oneself, when I look at paintings I notice how my companion compliments its look but I look close at the brush strokes, how the colours were put on, what brush was used, or what type of paint the artist chose to use. I become quite curious when I'm near a painting, I look for brush hairs, the directions of the brush strokes, or the shapes of strokes to create the image. This painting makes me wonder too many things I cannot possibly ask as of right now. I read on Grant Wood's paintings and noticed that the majority of the paintings that had people in them, they weren't smiling. They blankly stared. I found that peculiar. I tried to search for closeups of the painting to see maybe the brush strokes or even just what kind of brush, but nothing came up. I crossed past one kind-of-closeup of the painting and it appeared as if there were dots? I wondered if it was the horrible quality of the photo or if it was a technique the artist used. If it turns out to be the latter, I am intrigued.
Each artist has their way of painting, for example, Monet, my absolute favourite artist of all time, liked to paint with short brush strokes, Van Gogh liked to paint with long brush strokes, Bob Ross was light with his brush, and so on. Of course, I'm not entirely sure if they liked to paint that way or if they chose to because it looked better, but it was I observed.
Grant Wood's style is new to me, I haven't seen any like it before, but then again, I haven't seen any of the others when I first saw them. His paintings are smooth looking, and I assume he used oil, with the most finest details put on. His style is more realistic rather than abstract, with the right proportions of the human face and shadows and highlights.
I hope this helped, I'm not sure if I gave all the answers, and I'm sorry if this was too long, I got a bit lost in the middle and just ranted on and on.
