Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

95.  P.M.  out in the car - to the same country as last Saturday.

     Yesterday and today, very warm humid weather, the air full of thick bluish white haze, the sky a brassy yellow. For an hour or so both morning and evening the sun a glowing ball of red, and at mid-day like melted brass, or gold. Sunlight on the ground, or on the other objects, pale, and of a pinkish gold cast; the shadows likewise pale and blueish green.

     The early part of the afternoon I spent in wandering here and there, vainly trying to find some subject that would typify the season, the kind of weather + the particular kind of day. It was not until late afternoon that I found my subject, a white house with a tall symmetrical maple, surrounded by a field of dead grass, with the golden afternoon sunlight behind and a little to the right.

     I painted until the sun was low in the west, a red ball, in the thickening mists. Then I drove eastward, and parked under a large maple, with a wide valley to the south, a hilly pasture land crowned by the low woods to the north. I enjoyed the evening as I can only after having worked hard beforehand. As daylight slowly subsided, the half-moon became clearer low in the south, glowing with a pale brassy color. From all side came the sounds of insects, black crickets, tru-crickets, green grasshoppers. - At twilight I took a walk up the hill. All the time I was thinking that I must absorb to the full because the time was at hand when I could not get out as fre-