The Birches

American artist Charles Burchfield was a major painter of the 20th century who developed a unique style that evades categorization into a particular artistic movement. He never abandoned recognizable imagery, consistently turning to landscapes of nature and small towns; however, his distinct handling of paint provided an abstraction of natural objects into languid, expressive forms. His ecstatic vision of nature is at once haunting yet celebratory, tranquil yet vibrant, in a style that seemingly synthesizes art history from disparate periods including the work of Caspar David Friedrich, El Greco and Thomas Hart Benton.