Known for his American Gothic painting, Grant Wood was a proponent of regionalism in the arts and developed an aesthetic for rural midwestern life in the 1930s. Wood drew on characteristics of Northern Renaissance art and Art Deco design to create a vision of the American landscape more idealized than what was experienced then as the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. The struggle and destitution characteristic of the Depression are left out of this painting of Stone City Iowa, presenting instead a quiet but vibrant view of a farming homestead nestled in a river valley. Crops are newly blooming, livestock roam about, and the surrounding landscape glows with hope and security. Even vegetation is shaped without rough edge, consumating a memory of – or vision for – the region pre and post-Depression.