Charles Burchfield received his artistic training at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he was exposed to Asian art, including Chinese painting and Japanese prints. An inspired practitioner of watercolor, his work focused on the natural world and the effects of industrialization on small-town America. According to Burchfield’s friend Edward Hopper, “The work of Charles Burchfield is most decidedly founded, not on art, but on life, and the life that he knows and loves best.” The artist kept many sketchbooks and journals; an excerpt from one of these has been linked to Two Fence Posts: “Give effect of light coming from above—blend as mass to lighter & finally have only an outline of mass, which itself thins out toward the light.”