Brian Burris Artist’s Statement

I live and work and show in the city. I have been painting for twenty-three years, with a seven-year hiatus in the ordinary world. Then in 2002, my father died, a friend died, and a co-worker of mine died.  I also worked a car accident with teen-age fatalities, and a shooting in which the victim got clipped in the jugular. December is my month of death, loss, and creation.

I do abstracts in the action (or automatic) style, with elements of process painting/layer painting and the inverse of the latter: the removal, diffusion and distressing of those layers.  My technique is also aleatory, i.e. governed by ‘directed chance’. In themes, I explore the relationships of stark, degraded or deteriorated fields in contrast; muted shapes and colors, and nuances of ratio and perspective which communicate disassociation, loss and want. I work exclusively in acrylics.  My solo works tend to be acrylic on canvas, though I have a large body of collaborative works executed on mylar. Baudelaire wrote, “Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through a forest of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.” I paint the forest. Brian Burris, February 2006