Charles Burchfield Art

1893–1967. Working primarily in watercolor, Burchfield’s vision was poetic, and he discovered unexpected beauty in familiar and ordinary places. He responded to sights he knew well and attempted to convey more than just visual impressions. Edward Hopper recognized his friend’s gift for capturing what artists generally overlooked—the jumble of eaves and gables formed by his neighbor’s roofs, the sag in a barn door, the tilt of the weathered drain spout on the side of a house. Burchfield’s subjects are unsophisticated but gain immediacy through energetic two-dimensional patterns that animate the surface of his pictures and evoke sensations of the subject’s particular play of light, weather conditions, and even sound. His emphasis on synaesthetic experiences has an affinity with Arthur Dove, another artist widely collected by Duncan Phillips.

Duncan Phillips was an admirer of Burchfield and elaborated on the artist’s early accomplishments: “He was, in his technic [sic], both daring and deliberate, both whimsical and precise. When he wished he could conjure up the essence of a scene indoors or out.” Phillips’s regard was also implicit in his correspondence with the artist … “I have never had the pleasure of meeting you but I feel that I know you through your very expressive art.”