Charles Burchfield: Elemental

Over the course of five decades, Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) made watercolors that depict what he called the “tremendous force of nature.” These works reveal his keen attention to wildflowers and woodlands, insects and songbirds, weather in all its temperaments and the changing seasons. He found artistic inspiration and a sense of spiritual renewal in the countryside around his childhood home in Salem, Ohio, as well as in Gardenville, New York, where he lived for over forty years. Frequently painting outdoors (en plein air), Burchfield used a dry-brush technique, in which only a small amount of water is applied to the paintbrush, to create watercolors with saturated color and jagged lines suggestive of nature’s dynamic energy. Drawn from the Whitney’s collection, the watercolors in Charles Burchfield: Elemental include early landscapes, meditations on the sky, and monumental “reconstructions.” Taken together, these paintings capture the places he found sacred and reflect his lifelong reverence for the elemental forces and cycles of the natural world. As Burchfield once wrote: “I come to Nature not to create a fantastic expression of my own soul, but to faithfully portray the soul of nature. My soul is the means, not the end.” Charles Burchfield: Elemental is part of an ongoing initiative to present rarely seen works from the Whitney’s collection, following exhibitions of Wanda Gág, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol. Charles Burchfield: Elemental is organized by Caroline Webb, Curatorial Assistant.