Charles Burchfield, Fifty Years a Painter, 1965

1918
From mid-January until the end of my departure for the Armed Services, my main interest was Humanity, not Nature. It was a bitter winter. I tried to show the hardness of human lives, and the struggles, which naturally led into making “portraits” of individual houses, designed to show just what sort of people lived in them. Many were social or economic comments (Miner’s Huts, workmen’s homes, overshadowed by shops, Black Houses, etc.). In others I tried to express the ingrown lives of solitary people. I made a “dummy” for a project picture, which would show all the social and economic strata of a town; it never got beyond that stage, however, much to my regret.

Charles Burchfield, Fifty Years a Painter, 1965