Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

107. can only get it as a child? I look at the lights, the baubles, and the dusky green on the needles – so quiet, almost with a personality – as tho it were thinking and there comes an indefinable nostalgic memory of the security a child has in the loving care of a parent- a retreat in these dark branches where a child can sit and contentedly dream of the outside world of snow, and skating and sled-riding.

January 3, 1936-               

     A dream – of our moving into a flat in a poor neighborhood in Buffalo, which was on a third floor of an old ramshackle house- From one of the bedroom windows there was a view out even the harbor where boats were going to and fro – and I thought, in my dream of what fun for a boy to sit and watch the busy harbor life.

January 4, 1936

     Every so often I pass thru a period of despising my locale, and longing for either new, more romantic & picturesque scenes, or for the old remembered haunts in Ohio. Giving way to such a state of mind is a weakness, and is very destructive. Suddenly some little incident restores me to courage and sanity, and I realize anew the underlying truth, that any spot is fit for the artist who