Another dark damp day- raw wind from S.W. with a “spit” of rain at time. A.M. unpacking the two boxes.
P.M. in studio- studying various pictures- “December Sun” “Star Pierces the Clouds” and “Black Iron” (the last, one of the pictures just returned- I see now that it is unbalanced, and needs to be enlarged and something in the upper right hand corner, in the sky, to balance the terrific “pull” of the counter-weight ends of the bridges on the left). The clouds thicken, and at mid-afternoon it is very dark. Heavy rain and a strong wind.
A dream - Someone (possibly the publishers) had sent me an advance copy of a new book - the world as it appeared to a child (in this case, a girl) with many illustrations by some young artist. As I leafed thru it, all at once I myself, was in the farm home of the little girl- it was L-shaped, and I stood in the hall at the corner. I thought that the pictures were marvels of imaginative power and conventionalization, a true visual record of the actual “visions” of a child. One was the light coming into a window over the top of an old Victorian chair, or bed-stand. The halation of light as it broke over the object, was conventionalized into a beautiful significant design, full of the glory of a child’s innocent & unquestioning belief in God. I felt a warm protectiveness surrounding me, from all corners of the house. Each picture, as I looked at it, became translated into the actual scene in the home itself, so that I, in truth, was the child, grown up, and being allowed a peep into a lost world.
Charles E. Burchfield, December 3, 1947