As I stepped off the elevator on the third floor of the Whitney Museum, I was immediately greeted with a very large Burchfield watercolor painting of a spring landscape. The first thing I noticed were that the colors were not combinations I would have normally associated with nature in the spring. They were dark and muted. The trees are expressionistic, almost symbolic, like an Asian print. I have to admit, I didn’t get quite "get it" at first, until after I walked into the first room the of the exhibition.

For the first few minutes, I was still overcome with Burchfield’s use of dark colors, in what was supposed to be the beauty of a day in nature, but what was even more striking was the contrast of his expressions of light. Each painting seemed to have a unique portrayal of the sun and the warm, permeating way it lit everything around it. Burchfield had an extreme sensitivity to how light made nature appear and how it made him feel during different seasons, locations, and times of the day or night. It was as though the colors in his paintings moved into a crescendo into a glorious light.

Now my emotions have now evolved into a state similar to what I had over the summer when I saw the exhibit of Monet’s Lilies at the Gagosian Gallery. Monet was an obvious master landscape impressionistic influence, but I am also feeling the sad, but beautiful passionate movement of Van Gogh’s Starry Night in Burchfield’s paint strokes. There is a beautiful gloominess about Burchfield’s work. I could very much feel his perspective in each painting simply from his color choices and the energy of the movement of his brush strokes. The essence of the landscapes and his moods were easily translated. Colors were blended very well, creating unique and wonderful palette combinations. He used abstract, yet recognizable landscape images that succeeded in giving an impressionistic, realistic, and mystical effect all at once.

I was impressed with the way he used his charcoal outlines not only to sketch what was to be under the paint, but to enhance what was already painted. The charcoal outlines were visible and deliberate in many of his paintings. In his watercolor Blue Mountain of Dome, he combined charcoal outlines alongside mounted boards already covered with paint of the continued landscape images. There is a natural connectedness of these charcoal outlines of trees and clouds to its watercolor paint stroked parts. It is a magnificent vivid and equal marriage of light and dark, sketched and painted.

There is a sense of spirituality in Burchfield’s paintings, a continual theme of the light breaking through the darkness. The sun and light possibly represented God and the dark nature represented the sinful nature of man or himself. His journal writings, which were also exhibited alongside his paintings, gave particular insight into his faith and his struggles. His paintings look driven from inspiration, as the light appears to be a representation of his faith.

After seeing the entire exhibit, I am amazed by the excellent skill and use of different paint mediums. Burchfield was in no doubt a master of watercolors, but his use of gouache and oil paints were equivalently efficient. His earlier works were more flat and representational, but still included a sense of American nostalgia. All in all, I believe his paintings are timeless classics, and his interpretive use of light and colors are quite noteworthy. He was a master of recreating light though specific moments, seasons, and scales of emotions. With similarities to Monet and Van Gogh, he has a modern American feel, with all the training and versatility of his predecessors.

Marisol Tirelli Rivera