Jeffrey McMullen
View slideshow | View all
www.jeffreymcmullen.com
“March is the month of uncouthness, of raw ungoverned
power—Crows flying over wide valleys—Zigzag patches of snow
on the hills— The roar of the rapids—it holds me
spellbound—thought ceases & yet is scattered to the far
horizons where the white flames of March fires are
burning.”
--- Charles Burchfield
In
search of his painting locations, tracing the footsteps of
watercolorist Charles Burchfield through Western New York,
I found as much an exploration of ecological and
sociological transition as one of aesthetics. The story is
told in the paintings and the landscape itself as farm
fields have been abandoned to natural succession or as
suburbs have expanded relentlessly into them. His
“Windblown Asters” of 1951 depicts a field left to
overgrowth of goldenrod and asters with a barn in the
background, the fields of “In May” of 1939 are now forest,
the farmstead of “The Great Elm” of 1941, now rests below
the streets of Orchard Park.
There were people living in Valentine Flats when Burchfield
made his frequent forays into Zoar Valley, so it’s fair to
say it’s even more wild today at a time when “raw
ungoverned” wildness has become ever more essential. What
began as a search for the location where he painted his
“March Sunlight” in the 1920’s and what he saw in this
landscape led to not only a comparison of working with
brush and lens, but to a study of the low slanting but
brilliant March sunlight itself, strangely hard and bright
on this dramatic landscape emerging from winter.