Summer Buzz

t is late Sunday afternoon in August. A child stands alone in the garden listening to the metallic sounds of insects, " reads Charles Burchfield's own description of The Insect Chorus. " They are all his world, so, to his mind, all things become saturated with their presence–crickets lurk in the depths of the grass, the shadows of the trees conceal fantastic creatures, and the boy looks with fear at the black interior of the arbor, not knowing what terrible thing might be there. " The Insect Chorus, one of several works on the same theme, was painted during what Burchfield called his " golden year, " when he was fresh out of art school and back home in Salem, Ohio, in 1917. The work is a good example of his take on en plein air painting. An avid admirer of the outdoors, he immersed himself in it. He liked everything about it, even the annoying parts that most nature lovers merely tolerate for the sake of beauty. His artistic approach was a unique blend of naturalism, emotion, and imagination. " Surrounded by the familiar scenes of my boyhood, there gradually evolved the idea of recreating impressions of that period, the appearance of houses, the feelings of woods and fields, memories of seasonal impressions…. " Nature and its creatures remained of great interest to Burchfield all his life. He felt their sounds and captured them with extraordinary draftsmanship in his trademark watercolors. On the back of The Song of the Katydids on an August Morning (1917), he wrote, " A stagnant August morning during the drought season, as the pitiless sun mounts into the mid-morning sky, and the insect chorus commences, the katydids and locusts predominating. Their monotonous, mechanical, brassy rhythms soon pervade the whole air, combining with the heat waves of the sun, and saturating trees and houses, and sky. " Of The August North (A memory of childhood), he wrote, " As the darkness settles down, the pulsating chorus of night insects commences swelling louder and louder until it resembles the heartbeat of the interior of a black closet. " " Well, at one time I did think I was going to be a writ-er–when I was in high school and even the early years in art school I thought I was going to be a nature writer in somewhat the sense, you know, that Teale writes and …