How to Be influenced by a Master Artist
Charles Burchfield, The Constant Leaf , watercolor, 1960, Burchfield Penney Art Center What do you do as an artist when you're excited about the work of a really famous artist? Should you start working in their style? Over the last two years I've been serving as the Artist in Residence at the Burchfield Penney Art Center . I've held several thousand of his drawings from their Burchfield Archives in my hands and studied them for all they're worth. One can learn so much from absorbing the methods of the best who have gone before us- but it's tricky. detail from The Constant Leaf Probably it's Burchfield's unusual calligraphy-like details that first catches our eye, as in the detail above. It's an idiosyncratic handwriting he injects into all his work. In the The Constant Leaf at the top the explosion of patterns in the foliage is a classic example. But a longer look at the painting I think reveals another side to Burchfield