Life Cycles: The Charles E. Burchfield Collection
Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)
Oncoming Spring, 1954
Watercolor on paper, 30 x 40 inches
Burchfield Penney Art Center
Feeling a need to reinvigorate his art as the 1930s began, Burchfield left his designer's job and returned to painting full-time and to nature as his consummate inspiration. As if predicting this epiphany, Sunburst (1929-30), one of the artist's rare oil paintings, shows nature as an awesome and powerful force. As noted by guest curator Nancy Weekly, Charles Cary Rumsey Curator and Director of the Burchfield-Penney's Curatorial Department, this painting suggests a direction the artist would take in the future -- depicting a time and space continuum in the form of a storm.
The artist's later works embrace nature with a wild delight. Major watercolors from this period on view include Wind-Blown Asters (1952), a musical rendition of common wildflowers, December Storm (1941-60), a somber yet hopeful painting begun the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor; The Moth and the Thundercap (1961), a highly abstracted view of nature's uncontrollable energies; and Solitude (1918-63), Burchfield's most autobiographical and romantic painting. Numerous study drawings of some of these masterpieces are also on view for comparison.
Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)
Crows in March, 1952
Lithograph, from an edition of 60, printed by George C. Miller, 13 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches
The Charles Rand Penney Collection
Images and text courtesy of Burchfield-Penney Art Center and The American Federation of Arts.
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