Charles Burchfield, Journals, June 18, 1963

Clear sunny days—dry air—

Today while studying the “June Clouds” I suddenly saw the cobalt sky behind and above the clouds develop (in my inner eye) into a beautiful blue dome, with a huge cloud above it, from behind which golden yellow light poured downward on the earth below. And then came an old old memory of how the dome of heaven seemed to me when I was a child, as something tangible, a dome indeed, behind which lived God, and His angels —And I thought of the golden yellow Northwest of childhood, on a Sunday evening, a sacred promised land into which one could step from the edges of the rounded clouds.

My whole conception of the picture changed, also, the shape of it—from horizontal to upright—so as to make the arching dome of the sky dominate the picture (to be 54 x 50 [now it is 29 x 38]). It must become a scene inside that Heavenly land in the golden Northwest of June at sunset—But at noontime—the noontime of Summer in Eternity or Paradise.

Charles Burchfield, June 18, 1963