"Insect noises began to appear with frequency in paintings of 1917 as thin, calligraphic strokes that insinuated a monotonous hum. They seemed, when combined with envisaged heat waves, to saturate a painting not only with suggestions of sounds but with the sense of a steaming summer's day. The repetitive strokes, energizing leaves and grass, recall those extenuated, meditative observations most of us have made of a single blade of grass or an individual leaf which quivered imperceptibly, but palpably."

(charles burchfield, matthew baigell, 77)