Charles Burchfield: The Sacred Woods: A Centennial Exhibition

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Charles E. Burchfield's birth (1893–1967), the exhibition Charles Burchfield: The Sacred Woods: A Centennial Exhibition was the first of its kind, displaying works which exclusively considered the underlying visionary themes, pantheistic philosophy, and symbolism that shaped Burchfield's landscapes. Spanning his entire career, the exhibition focused on the early and late watercolors, tracing the development of his stylized vocabulary of emotionally and spiritually charged images inspired by nature.

Burchfield's early works, influenced by nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints, evolved into an uninhibited, experimental symbolism from 1917 through the beginning of 1918, and represented some of his most abstract images. Included in this group were drawings and watercolors which incorporated Burchfield's "Conventions for Abstract Thought," the artist's highly personal and codified visual language denoting moods and feelings, particularly those of childhood memories. Burchfield's desire to represent tenuous states of human emotion could be compared to his efforts to represent the sounds of nature. Images such as The Insect Chorus, 1917, were abstracted fantasies based on exaggerated sounds and movements of the world out-of-doors. And with a later watercolor, Midsummer Caprice, 1945, swirling clouds corresponded to sounds emanating from a cicada.