Walk into the Whitney or the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and you’ll eventually hit a wall that vibrates. It’s not the HVAC system. It’s the paper. Specifically, it's the massive, taped-together sheets of watercolor paper that define the paintings by Charles Burchfield. Most people think of watercolor as a "polite" medium—something for hobbyists painting Sunday landscapes or botanical sketches. Burchfield didn't get that memo. He treated watercolor like a physical brawl. He’s the guy who decided that if he couldn't hear the crickets or feel the blistering heat of an August afternoon in his work, the painting wasn't finished.
He was a visionary. Or maybe he was just incredibly attuned to the frequency of the Ohio and New York woods where he spent his life. While his contemporaries like Edward Hopper were busy painting the lonely silence of gas stations and diners, Burchfield was painting the noise of the swamp. He wanted to capture the "all-dayness" of a place. It’s weird stuff, honestly. It’s hallucinogenic without being surrealist. It’s grounded in the dirt of a backyard but looks like a transmission from another dimension.
The Sound of the Brush
Burchfield had this obsession with "audio-visual" art long before that was a buzzword. He developed a private shorthand—a set of "conventions for abstract thoughts"—to represent things you can't see. He had a specific zig-zag stroke for the "song of the cicada" and a heavy, drooping curve for "morbidness." When you look at paintings by Charles Burchfield from his middle period or his late-career explosions, you aren't just looking at trees. You are looking at the wind. You’re seeing the literal vibration of heat rising off a shingled roof.
It's noisy.
His 1917 work—often called his "golden year"—is particularly frantic. He was young, living in Salem, Ohio, and working at a wallpaper company. He’d spend his lunch breaks and nights sprinting into the fields to paint. He wasn't interested in the "pretty" version of nature. He liked the spooky parts. He liked the way a house looked like it had a face, or how a forest looked at dusk when the shadows started to feel like they were reaching for you. He called these "moods," and they are what separate him from every other American landscape painter of the 20th century.
Why He Taped His Paintings Together
If you look closely at his largest masterpieces, you’ll notice something odd. There are seams.
Burchfield was a recycler of his own soul. In the 1940s, he went back to the small, timid sketches he’d done as a young man in 1917. He felt they were "incomplete" or lacked the spiritual weight he now possessed. So, what did he do? He literally pasted more paper around the edges of the old paintings. He expanded them. He took a 12-inch sketch and turned it into a 4-foot epic. He’d blend the old style with the new, creating a strange dialogue between his younger and older selves. This is why a lot of paintings by Charles Burchfield have this patchwork quality. They are living documents.
It’s a nightmare for conservators. Tapes fail, glues dry out, and paper expands at different rates. But for the viewer, those seams are a roadmap of an artist obsessed with growth. He couldn't leave a good idea alone. He had to make it louder, bigger, and more intense.
The Haunting of the American Small Town
There’s a common misconception that Burchfield was just a "nature painter." That’s only half the story. During the 1920s and 30s, he became a central figure in the American Regionalist movement, though he never quite fit in with the likes of Grant Wood or Thomas Hart Benton. His version of the American town was... heavy.
Take a look at his depictions of Buffalo, New York, or the coal towns of Pennsylvania. He captures the soot. He captures the weight of a rainy Monday morning when the black smoke from the factories blends into the grey sky. There is a painting called Rainy Night that feels so wet you practically want to wipe your forehead after looking at it. He saw the industrial landscape as something vaguely monstrous but also deeply human. He didn't judge the "ugly" houses. He gave them character. He made them look like they were huddling together for warmth.
The Spiritual Nature of the Late Works
As he got older, the houses started to disappear, and the woods took over again. But this wasn't the spooky woods of his youth. This was a transcendental, almost ecstatic vision of the world.
In his late masterpiece Sun and Rocks, the sun isn't just a yellow circle. It’s a pulsating, white-hot eye of God blasting through the clouds. The rocks look like they are breathing. He was trying to get at the "spirit" of the thing. He’d stand out in the snow for hours, his feet freezing, just to catch the exact moment the light hit a hemlock tree. He was a fanatic.
You can’t talk about paintings by Charles Burchfield without talking about his relationship with the Buffalo-based collector Edward Root or the Rehn Gallery in New York. They stayed with him even when he pivoted away from the "marketable" realism of the 30s back into the weird, vibrating nature scenes of his later years. They knew he was onto something that transcended trends.
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Breaking Down the "Burchfield Style"
If you’re trying to identify his work in a gallery, look for these specific traits:
- Haloing: Objects often have a glowing aura or a "vibration" line around them.
- Exaggerated Scale: A dandelion might be painted with the same monumental importance as a mountain.
- Calligraphic Strokes: The grass isn't just green; it's a series of rhythmic, black-ink-like slashes.
- The "V" Shape: He loved using a deep V-shape in his compositions to draw the eye into a dark, mysterious center—usually a forest interior.
Honestly, his work feels more like a 1960s psychedelic poster than a 1940s watercolor. It’s wild to think he was doing this in a studio in Gardenville, New York, while the rest of the art world was pivoting toward Abstract Expressionism. He was an island.
Dealing With the "Watercolor Only" Label
One thing that bugs art historians is when people dismiss Burchfield because he "only" did watercolors. There’s a bias. Oil is "serious," and watercolor is "light." Burchfield flipped that. He used dry-brush techniques, scraping, and heavy layering to give his work the visual weight of an oil painting. He’d layer color until the paper couldn't take any more.
He proved that you don't need a canvas to be profound. You just need a deep enough connection to the subject. He once wrote in his journals—which are massive, by the way, millions of words long—that "an artist must paint not what he sees, but what he interpreted." He didn't care about the literal leaf. He cared about the greenness of the leaf.
How to Experience Burchfield Today
If you want to see these in person, the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo is the holy grail. They have the largest collection and his actual studio reconstructed inside the museum. It’s a trip. You can see his brushes, his jars, and the very windows he looked out of while he was recreating the universe on paper.
What’s the takeaway? Maybe it’s that the world is a lot more alive than we give it credit for. Burchfield’s paintings suggest that if we just sat still long enough, we’d see the trees dancing and hear the stars humming. It’s a bit hippy-dippy, sure, but when you’re standing in front of a six-foot-tall watercolor of a winter solstice, you start to believe him.
Actionable Insights for Art Lovers and Collectors
To truly appreciate or even begin collecting work influenced by this style, keep these points in mind:
- Look for the "Middle Period" if you like realism. If you prefer the grit of the American scene, focus on his works from 1920 to 1940. These are more structured and less "trippy."
- Inspect the seams. If you are ever looking at a piece for purchase or study, checking the paper joins can tell you if it’s a later "reconstruction" piece, which are often his most valued and complex works.
- Read the journals. The University of Minnesota Press published a condensed version of his diaries. Reading them while looking at the paintings is like having the artist whisper his secrets in your ear. It changes the experience entirely.
- Check light sensitivity. If you own a Burchfield (lucky you), remember these are watercolors on paper. They are incredibly sensitive to UV light. Museum-grade glass and low-light environments are non-negotiable for preservation.
- Visit the source. Go to a park in the Rust Belt in late November. Look at the dead weeds against the grey sky. That specific, melancholy beauty is the essence of his work. Once you see it in the wild, you’ll see it in his paintings forever.