I grew up in Upstate New York. It took the art of Charles Burchfield to help me rediscover the beauty of its winters.
“Late Winter Radiance” (1961-62) by Burchfield. (The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, Museum Purchase, 1962)
BUFFALO — When I was 14, I discovered winter.
School, at the time, was a satanic misery, so I spent most of my life alone and came to enjoy that condition more than any other. I owned a pair of skis and began to use them, exploring the woods near an old apple orchard in Upstate New York. Most often, this was in the late afternoon, when the winter light reduced everything to a dull palette of brown and gray.
Or so I thought at first. In fact, the woods were a spectacle of different browns and grays, ochers and ecrus, with notes of dark pine and a rare hint of blue sky peeking through the leafless canopy of wiry branches above. I don’t know if I was aware of these colors at the time, but about five years ago I rediscovered them, and with them winter once again, in the paintings of Charles Burchfield.
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