CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/28/2023

An endless panorama of beauty and drama in ‘The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield’

At last, we have released the new, abridged edition of Charles Burchfield’s collected journal entries, heroically condensed from more than 10,000 pages down to 200 by intrepid Song Cave publisher Ben Estes. “Burchfield’s Journals were a sanctuary for his thoughts,” Burchfield scholar Nancy Weekly writes in her Introduction. “His clear, detailed accounts of inspirational experiences and appreciation of nature’s resplendence are equivalent to his life’s art. He worried that people would not understand his work, writing: ‘The great difficulty of my whole career as a painter, is that what I love most (i.e. weather, change of seasons) not only holds little of interest for most people, but in many of its phases, is downright disagreeable, and not even to be mentioned! I love the approach of winter, the retreat of winter, the change from snow to rain & viceversa; the decay of vegetation, and the resurgence of plant-life in the spring—These to me are exciting and beautiful, an endless panorama of beauty and drama, but to them, the mass of humanity remains either bored & indifferent or actually hostile–’ He pushed on, undeterred. He had the courage to pursue his artistic and spiritual life on his own terms.” Featured image is Starlit Woods (1917–64).