Tree and Trees, My House (First Day of Summer)

Tree and Trees, 12" x 9", oil pastel




My House (First Day of Summer), 9" x 12", oil pastel

I recently went to The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City to see the Charles Burchfield exhibition. The Whitney tweets about the show:

Burchfield only did 27 oil paintings but thousands of watercolors. Four of the oils are on view in this exhibition.

In the 1940s Burchfield began taking earlier works & expanding on them. If you get close enough you can see where the pieces of paper join.

Later in life Burchfield suffered many ailments but still got out in nature to paint, sometimes laying on the ground due to a bad back.

Peter Schjeldahl of the @newyorker on Charles Burchfield: http://bit.ly/aGjNW6. Lovely audio slideshow: http://bit.ly/a74zBZ

Whitney Museum
http://bit.ly/PWu4l

The tweets don't mention the scale of the later watercolors, epic at my guess of 4' x 3'. Rather than using a roll of watercolor paper like Arches makes (I'm not sure that was available at the time), the papers he tapes together are smaller than 8" x 10". The color and rhythmic patterns are stunning. The specific places and weather he directly observes spin into fantasy which is the difference compared with his earlier, grayish paintings of American buildings of the time. Permitting himself to let loose, he boldly puts forth an inner vision the general populace may not understand. This is the difficulty of being a visionary, waiting for people to catch up.

The exhibit has old copies of Life and Time magazines opened to feature stories on Burchfield celebrating his depiction of American of American life via common architecture. The paintings capture a gritty feeling of manufacturing at the time, working class environments rather than the monumental achievements of sky scrapers. People saw their lives in these pictures while his assertions of his dreams were less concrete in their minds. Of course, these later watercolors are the best and his place in art history would be be diminished without them. They sometimes focus on a central space like the altar of a cathedral, not unlike the spaces I'm after. Many artists say that art museums are like church to them and even more people say the same of nature. Burchfield's paintings evoke the celebration of the divine on both counts. This interest is an expression vastly differing from the ripples of the industrial revolution. A forward thinker, his work challenges us to stay true to ourselves and to trust our instincts, artists or not.

My pastels open the door to summer day dreaming, allowing you to float away with art as a springboard. Many artists can help get you there.

- Tofu-Powered Art-Chick