Charles Burchfield, Journals, January 16, 1931

I came upon this paragraph in Henri’s “the art spirit”:

The art student that should be, and is so rare is, the one whose life is spent in the love and culture of his personal sensations, the cherishing of his emotions, never undervaluing them the pleasure of exclaiming them to others and an eager search for the clearest expression. He never studies drawing because it will come in useful later when he is an artist – He has not time for that. He is an artist in the beginning and is busy finding the lines and forms to express the pleasures and emotions with which nature has already charged him.

The closeness with which that takes with my own early experience makes it startlingly beautiful to me.  When I think of the useless hours I spent at school brooding because I could not learn to draw

Charles Burchfield, January 16, 1931