Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

Indiana's journal page for November 1, 1959, contains sketches of two "November paintings," one red and the other black, and both inspired by the shadow of his corn plant. Notes next to the sketches indicate that both canvases were overpainted. About his progress that day Indiana writes:

"The stars were somehow very well arranged for creativity this morning, for truly the stars were at work when I proposed and disposed these three paintings in a kind of continuous burst of invention, and somehow pleasantly, linking sweet Edinburgh days of grey stone and magnificent flora with those of red brick and the fervor of an East River School."

He then describes his inspiration for the paintings:

"The corn plant, very late in the night, or rather early in the morning of this, the first day of November, cast its shadow for my cartoon, and almost baroquely drew me further from the classical rigidity of orbs and staffs of summer days. For it is still fall and a great time for reminiscing on summers lushness, the fullness of its forms."