Genesis 1924

Charles Burchfield made this watercolor, Genesis, with juicy dark browns and yellows to depict the beginning of the world. It's not a literal start, but more like a felt experience, and a lot about the process of painting itself. Look closely, and you'll see how Burchfield makes the water seem to churn and bubble with nervous energy; the paint is thin but applied with great feeling, in a way that reminds me of Chinese landscape painting. The colors aren’t mixed so much as layered, so there’s a feeling of light emanating from within. Now, check out the figure looming in the clouds, some sort of primordial being. It’s almost comic, yet it feels terrifying and powerful at the same time. That mix of goofy and sublime is what makes Burchfield so unique, and it points to his roots in American transcendentalism. His contemporary Marsden Hartley shares this connection, but Burchfield does his own thing by really letting the paint get wild.