Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

96.                     July 31-1935 (Wednesday)

     There is a sinister quality to a hot August wind as it sweeps up over the oat stubble, and moans thru the loose clapboards of an old barn. Tho heat waves are dancing over the hot dry fields, one thinks, paradoxically enough, of winter.

August 7-8, 1935

     Sketching old Gothic house in Zoar Valley- two days of cold gray skies, odd at this season-

     At the end of the day’s work, it was a pleasure to get in the car and drive over the roads – and especially did I enjoy going uphill – The sense of vicarious power that I felt going up in low gear was balm to my tired mind and body-

August 14, 1935 Wednesday-

     It is agonizing to be in a season like this, and be limited in what one can absorb and express of it. How to expand to increase one’s faculties, to be a dozen minds, and have a hundred hands!

     I look at the old house in my sketch “Bearded Hills” and I think: “up such a lane could I go-up to the house, and into the dining room, where would be at the table, my aunt Em, and my mother, and uncles, and