Throughout her year as Burchfield artist-in-residence, Janelle Lynch will share her thoughts and impressions with us as we share her journey into the spirit and work of Charles Burchfield.
In Spain, wondering about CEB's presence here. Found July Drought Sun at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.
http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/ficha_obra/650
July Drought Sun is an example of the personal, fanciful style developed by Burchfield in order to represent nature’s deepest mysteries. He began working on the painting in 1949, while teaching at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, where he met the Finnish editor of a local newspaper who described to him the views of the countryside and nature portrayed by many writers from this Scandinavian country, further heightening Burchfield’s own interest in the seasons and climatic conditions. In this summer landscape, the foreground vegetation in shades of brown is withering and parched, while the lake on the horizon appears to be evaporating in the July heat. The sun itself, painted bright orange, blazes intensely and powerfully, beating down on the dry landscape with its rays. Here the watercolours are applied in short, dynamic strokes that disturb the calm of the scenery and convey a feeling of unrest. Burchfield, a refined watercolourist, often used this technique to give expression to his impressions of nature on large sheets of paper.
Paloma Alarcó
Janelle Lynch is the 2013 Burchfield resident artist. She has garnered international recognition over the last decade for her large-format photographs of the urban and rural landscape. Widely exhibited, her work is in several public and private collections including the Burchfield Penney, George Eastman House Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, the Fundación Vila Casas, Barcelona, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Salta, Argentina.