There are three main themes in Burford's work: World War I veterans, the circus, and Admiral Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole in 1911-12. Forestalled belongs to the latest group of works. English Admiral Scott set out in 1911 to discover the South Pole. His group suffered numerous hardships on the journay only to find, upon arrival at the pole, that they had been preceded by a team of Norwegian explorers. On the way back to England, Scott's expedition was beset with illness, lack of food, and severe weather. All of the explorers perished, the last being Admiral Scott.  When Scott's campsite was discovered later, his thorough journals recounted the whole moving story. Burford abstractly depicts the suffering of Scott's expedition, through the hard contrast between balck and white that denotes the polar landscape and frozrn figures in the night sky.

Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1920, Burford studied painting with Grant Wood at the University of Iowa. After completing his B.F.A. in 1942, Burford returned to the University of Iowa  and received his M.F.A. in 1947 and became a member of the faculty that same year.

Source: News, July/August 1990.