How Charles Burchfield has influenced me...? Hmmm - I first came across a painting of his that seemed to be in the Thomas Hart Benton tradition somehow - a man in a wagon drawn by a horse and a plain wooden country type store on a hilltop. Many years passed before I came across the artist who did it. Burchfield speaks to me with his mystical language of quivering, growing organic forms in nature. Everything moves in his pictures. (Everyone except that one I just described.) and then I found out that many of his marks are intellectualized expressions for mood. It was then I knew I was dealing with a crazy man. A sort of surrealist. At that time I was investigating Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo. "The Ashcan School" and the "American Moderns" have always spoken to me as well - Henri, Bellows, Dove, etc. But Burchfield is in a class by himself. I took a bus from Boston a few summers ago to see the Whitney show of his work. Ohio was his Monhegan Island and he really makes it sing.
Dan Osterman is an artist living and working in Monhegan Island, Maine. More at http://www.etsy.com/shop/DanOsterman.