Well, Halloween's over! It was great, wasn't it?
I didn't have time to go for an art-directed porch this year, so I went for the kind favored by rural farmers and Ray Bradbury-type kids living in small towns (above). How do you like it? No, I didn't make the dummy shown in the photo, but mine was pretty close. I was proud of it.
Gee, this'll be my last Halloween in Los Angeles. I'll be moving soon and my next Halloween will be spent in a town something like the one above.
Spooky little Charles Burchfield towns like that (above) were tailor-made for Halloween.
In such a town it's easy to imagine a witch landing on a roof, reaching into a window, grabbing a child, and flying away with her.
What would happen to such a kid? Who knows? The forest would simply "absorb" her.
She'd merge with the Fall leaves.
She'd melt under the sleet and freezing rain.
It's no wonder that people make up stories about places like this. Maybe I'll try my hand at it myself.
4 comments:
I like the use of the Charles Burchfield paintings in this story. I can almost smell the rain in the second one!
*third one, I mean.
Nodnar: Glad you liked them! Burchfield is an underappreciated artist. Some critics believe his best work was the expressionist, mystical, abstract canvases he did in his old age, but I disagree. He had a unique take on realistic subjects and that's where his insights were greatest.
Even so, I have so much respect for the guy that keep trying to like the later pictures. Maybe they're better than I realize. Books on Burchfield were done in offset and maybe that method doesn't capture what he was trying to say. I've seen the same Golden Books reproduced in both lithography and offset, and the the lithographic versions were always much better. Maybe Burchfield's abstract pictures were never reproduced right.
I'll have to check his later work out, I have only seen the ones posted on your blog. The landscapes are so moody, and he seems to focus on unusual and obscure places which fascinates me.
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