Our family has always had a fascination with the old, falling-down house or barn. One may pass it while driving through the countryside. I don’t quite know what it is that captivates us, but it’s many a falling-down house or barn that has been the object of my father’s or mother’s (or even my own) paint.

Maybe it’s the human connection we find, seeing a once strong and vital home in a more vulnerable and passing state – that it’s now recognizable the daily toils the structure undergoes.

Perhap it’s because the result is inevitable. Where earlier the building could have been repaired, expanded, painted, or remodeled, we know now it will not. Now the fate is certain and near.

It isn’t an accident scene response. People respond to a crash scene trusting or hoping the situation is affecting a stranger. There is a belief it would not happen to one’s self.

It is the opposite in both senses. We like to look at such a building as an old friend, who might still tell a great story.

Whether we blink at it while whizzing by in the car, or have set up our easels and watercolors to capture it on a sunny afternoon, I savor the experience. The next look may not be the same.

Here are more pictures of a falling-down house and barn I came across recently…