"Why would you want to paint this old barn?"

Summer road trip to Michigan; making time to paint in Suttons Bay; when I asked permission to paint this old barn from the owner selling strawberries at a roadside stand, she said, "Why this old barn? There are lots of prettier barns around." 

If you like to paint plein air then you know the strange lure of places that aren't particularly pretty. There's an immense appeal to making sense of the jumble, of sorting out shapes, of determining areas of emphasis, not to mention a sort of reverence of these old structures.