05/28/2026
May 28, Tuesday –
A warm humid day – at dawn sunlight streaming across the earth, but before light, clouded sky, and a heavy shower – Bertha slept late, so I put in the time writing letters.
I did not expect the men to come to move the shed, but the rain ceased, and they were soon at work –
A.M. – put away the pictures that I had out yesterday – got out the “Lilacs #2” (it must have a new name) with the thought that prove the material
[in the midst of this writing for May 28th, Burchfield inserts the following text}:
A- May 27 – I keep thinking of those boys and girls – and of the impermanent nature of their being – the time will come when they will vanish altogether (they will become adults) – What they are now is so fragile – so easy to rub out – whoever has looked into the eyes of a child and seen dthere, trust and admiration – yes perhaps love, has a treasure he can carry in his memory all his life.
for a small sketch (with some color) It has never been satisfactory. But as soon as I sit it on the easel I saw at once what it needed – It was too “all-over” in its interest, the trees were too combined with false foliage, etc. – What it needed was an abstract treatment first, then to be brought backward to a conventionalized reality –
I was bothered a little by the presence of the men working right outside the window, but was pretty successful in putting them out of my mind –
The work went pretty well – when I brought it in and set it up on the hi-fi, Bertha thought that I had at least solved it.
Evening - the Kabalevsky, Prokofiev, Dvorak record – It recalls so vividly the 1953 June when I was working on the drawings show for the Cleveland Print Club – For that reason the music seems fraught with nostalgia verging on sadness – a climactic period in my life, when some things went out of it forever.
Charles Burchfield, Journals, May 28, 1963
Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967), Early Spring, 1966-67; watercolor and charcoal on paper, 37 1/8 x 42 1/4 inches, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Gift of Charles Rand Penney, 1994
