Talk:Charles E. Burchfield
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Known for his visual commentaries on the effects of Industrialism?
I've never edited a Wikipedia article and wouldn't do so now without considerable thought and full understanding of the editing guidelines. However, I'm a longtime Burchfield fan and I know that the following characterization of his work is misleading at best: "He is known for his visual commentaries on the effects of Industrialism on small town America as well as for his paintings of nature." While Burchfield did paint images of "small town America" which sometimes depicted the effects of Industrialism, he was hardly interested in making social or economic statements through his paintings. I've read his diaries in which he writes extensively about him motivations as far as his drawings and paintings, and I recall nothing about wanting to make visual statements on the effects of industrialization. Yes, he is known for his paintings of nature. However, what distinguishes Burchfield's best work is the extraordinarily idiosyncratic way that he experienced nature and the way that he translated that experience into images. He tried to capture in visual language the complete sensory experience of being immersed in nature, in ways that are difficult to describe and border on the mystical. For example, he wrote about "hearing flowers," and painting the sounds that he heard. The resulting paintings are strange, fantastical, fanciful worlds, full of elements we can certainly recognize, but accompanied by things such as zig zagging wave-like lines emanating outward from plants and insects. The paintings are informed by a kind of stylized exaggeration which is at once playful and joyous and anxious in its intensity. Burchfield's work lives in a precarious place between unbridled celebration and almost menacing intensity of feeling, of sensory experience.
I realize that the above is more appropriate for a critical essay and not an encyclopedia article. I wrote these thoughts here, however, to try to get across why I feel the characterization of his work as it stands now is inaccurate. I would be very interested to hear from others on this. NSpector 09:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
