Conversations

Thursday, March 11, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s Autumnal Fantasy (1916-44)
with Ted Pietrzak

Charles Burchfield considered Autumnal Fantasy to be the epitome of the season. In a frost covered landscape, a pair of nuthatches energizes the woods with a “penetrating call which echoes and re-echoes throughout the woods.”

 

Thursday, March 18, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s Dangerous Brooding
with Nancy Weekly

Dangerous Brooding is one of Burchfield’s unique Conventions for Abstract Thoughts. Find out what motivated the artist to create such curious symbols and why they introduce the exhibition. Nancy Weekly is head of collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

 

Thursday, March 25, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s End of the Day (1938)
with Scott Propeack

End of the Day is a social commentary on the tedium of laborers lives in a generic rust-belt town. Find out how this representation of the worker is sympathetic of the struggles of the 1930s worker.

 

Thursday, April 1, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s White Violets and
Abandoned Coal Mine (1918)
with Tullis Johnson

White Violets and Abandoned Coal Mine from 1918 addresses the painting’s subject matter, through an historical and metaphorical lens.

 

Thursday, April 8, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s Studio Doodling
with Kathy Gaye Shiroki

“It seems to me I have doodled all my life” Burchfield wrote. I recall doodling on my mother’s Sunday tablecloth before I was of grade-school age. Perhaps I was born with a doodle pencil in my hand.” Investigate Burchfield’s doodles and their meanings.

 

Thursday, April 15, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s The Four Seasons (1951 – 59)
with Mary Kozub

Fiery rays burst through clouds to electrify a frozen landscape as hepaticas bloom from snow banks and golden fields hum with life. Experience the sublime unfolding of nature in Burchfield’s The Four Seasons.

 

Thursday, April 22, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s Pyramid of Fire (1929)
with Scott Propeack

Pyramid of Fire captures a frenetic activity of people not frequently representative the artist’s oeuvre. Find out how this work veers from Burchfield’s beautiful landscapes but still pays homage to the power of the nature.

 

Thursday, April 29, 12:15 pm

Burchfield’s Two Ravines (1934 – 43)
with Nancy Weekly

Representing a turning point in Burchfield’s career, Two Ravines is one of two watercolors enlarged in 1943 as an experiment in composition to herald the arrival of spring. Rather than attempting to capture a single moment, Burchfield instead unravels the transition of seasons across the picture plane and within its depths.

 

Saturday, May 22, 2:15 pm

Conservation and Recent Research on the Paintings of Charles E. Burchfield with Dr. Judith Walsh, Art Conservator with the art conservation at Buffalo State College, Mary Broadway, graduate student in the art conservation currently exploring Burchfield’s use of watercolor pigments, and Patricia Hamm, well known area art conservator specializing in conserving works by Burchfield and most recently the wallpaper mural Country Life and the Hunt design by Burchfield for the M. H. Birge Co.