My most disturbing problem in these later years that I have too many ideas – so many have piled up and more keep crowding my mind that I find myself in the following dilemma – which to concentrate on? I cannot possibly live long enough to do them all. They all seem equally important – so the upshot is I wander among them as in a labyrinth, the key to which has been lost – and so little is accomplished – Is this really fecundity? Or is it a sort of glorified day dreaming? With it comes a frustration or guilt that sometimes becomes almost unknowable. So little time. I tell myself, when what is needed to make some real decisions.
And even when I can make up my mind to work on one definite picture, I make false moves, which have to be eliminated. So it was with the “August Sun and Spider-Web Tree” – I want a sun that is hot and blazing, overpowering, filling a hot burning sky, one that seems as if it would annihilate all things on a parched earth – But what I create is a sun that turns out to look like a rosette of some sort – which means that much experimenting and research must be done before I can achieve my aim –
Charles Burchfield, August 20, 1964