Mike Glier and Charles Burchfield

In 2022, Mike Glier (b. 1953, Kentucky) was invited to be an artist in residence at the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State University. The Burchfield Penney has the largest collection of paintings by, as well as the archives of, Charles Burchfield (1893, Ashtabula, Ohio – 1967, West Seneca, NY), a painter and ‘visionary artist’ most known for his watercolors of nature scenes. In 2024 the Burchfield Penney released a dynamic book, “A Grammar of Animacy,” and in early 2025 presented an exhibition curated by Nancy Weekly, a Charles Burchfield scholar, in dialogue with Glier that paired Burchfield's and Glier's works. Krakow Witkin Gallery is proud to extend this gesture with a second exhibition juxtaposing recent works by Glier with historic Burchfield works on loan from a private collection.   

Mike Glier draws and paints to explore topics of common interest. He also has taught, which he considers a happy, satisfying, and dematerialized part of his creative output. Masculine identity, desire, and violence informed much of his early work. For the last two decades, however, he has focused on the human relationship with land. “My landscape projects are propelled by a number of things, including the love of paint and abstraction, but most importantly, by a desire to do my part to help make the changes in philosophy that are required if humanity is to create a sustainable future.  By studying the land and responding to it freshly, I hope to demonstrate attachment, respect and engagement.  And if the paintings are good enough, they will find their way into public life to do their job of representing the joy of living in the world and the wonder of perceiving it, and if they succeed at this, to evoke the will to create balance within it.” 

Krakow Witkin Gallery would like to extend much appreciation to Nancy Weekly and to the lender of the historic Burchfield drawings.