By sympathy with the particular, he has made it epic and universal. A gregarious painter friend of mine tells me that the Burchfield show is being fervently discussed in downtown studios and upstate summer retreats. Burchfield s qualities are opposite the shallow groupthink of facile theatricality that have been boring the hell out of many of us lately. His poignant example suggests the wisdom that the way up is often the way down. No other American painter could have done it.
Genius is always unique.
He would have had it no other way.