The dramatic landscapes of Wales have historically offered appropriate inspiration to all those who have turned to it for solace, for an alternative to explosive human activities that leave individuals gasping for breath. There’s something so primeval about the landscape that it provides a remarkable focus to connect with one’s inner emotions. And if all of this can be successfully translated into a painting, then the results are as spellbinding as the works of British artist Brendan Stuart Burns. Burns’s latest works, inspired by the Pembrokeshire landscape of west Wales offer a similar sublime insight into the inner zones of a man’s mind. His London gallerist, Gordon Samuel of Osborne Samuel Gallery, says his works have a “Zen-like quietude.” These works — paintings, drawings and ceramics — are currently on view at New York’s Rosenberg & Co., marking his first solo in the city, titled “Brendan Burns: Flow & Pulse.” Marianne Rosenberg says that her gallery “now shines with the presence of something pure and exceptional.” On the occasion of his new exhibition, the artist speaks to BLOUIN ARTINFO.Your current exhibition is inspired by the Pembrokeshire landscape, which you also dealt with in your PhD. Could you talk about your continuous engagement with the Pembrokeshire Coast? The Pembrokeshire coast has been my central inspiration and influence for the past fifteen years, where light, reflection, refraction, colour, journey, surface texture and the ambiguity of space, coupled with a personal correspondence with belief, identity and upbringing have generated my significant creative output. My initial relationship with Pembrokeshire came about through family visits and holidays. I was always drawing whilst visiting, but at the time didn’t contemplate that some 25 years on, it would have become my creative focus. Previous subject matters dealt with the deep political divides in Britain in the 1980s, from the Miners strike to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. As a young student painter at the Slade School of Art, I was indeed ‘angry’, but looking back, the common denominator between that work and Pembrokeshire is my absolute love of paint itself. The processes at work on the coast in west Wales have been ‘learnt’ through drawing and walking the landscape, again and again and again. This has undoubtedly established a deep sense of ‘Place’ and relationship that has begun to offer the opportunity to refract, reflect meaning back to me, the artist. Walking the beach and coast during a heavy tidal swell and squall some time back, it became even more apparent that it was ‘the breath’ that my work references again and again. To feel breath, the wind and space. To be human in the primeval wind, to taste the wind, to shiver. To breathe in memory, thought, serenity, time and contemplation. When I ask myself once again, what is the point of painting? What do my paintings do? The point is quite simply to create a painting, which allows thought itself to breathe.You write in your statement: ‘The ‘spiritual’ within what I do as a painter, is the common denominator within my creativity. It doesn’t matter, on reflection, whether the work is concerned with the urban; New York, or the rural; Pembrokeshire, these subject matters are just one of many reasons for making paintings.’ However, do you think in present times if one has to explore abstract art, it is necessary to wind away from technology-centric life which continuously erodes any plain of ambiguity, to think, to see, to absorb?Ironically, I have produced a significant body of paintings inspired by numerous visits to New York in the early 1990s, paintings that took on broad titles that included zip codes or areas of New York, including Tribeca, Soho, and Gramercy. All experimented with the ‘plan view;’ initial drawings from high-rise buildings, including the Twin Towers but not the neon color and ‘in your face’ obvious speed of life associated with the city. This was always the light and weather of January visits, white-on-white canvases inspired by the works of Robert Ryman and lucid brushwork of De Kooning. I think what I am referencing when I say the ‘spiritual’ within what I do as a painter is the common denominator within my creativity. It doesn’t matter, on reflection, whether the work is concerned with the urban – New York – or the rural – Pembrokeshire…,’ it’s that the common theme through all my past subject matter has been deeply influenced by a sense of loss, mortality and absence. The ‘Sense of Place’ itself is a true spiritual connection between place, self and the painting act. My relationship with ambiguity is concerned with inner emotion and the sensed experience of the viewer; it is about the contemplative and experience of self-reflection. The representation of space and scale within a painting dictates the ambiguous, and it is this level of ambiguity that is crucial in order to allow the viewer the opportunity to enter the painting’s experience primarily through the sensed and emotive. Surface, color, rhythm, balance, space and scale are integral communicators here. The physicality of paint itself, the synaesthetic, primeval ability innate in us all to smell, taste and hear color.Of course, the solitude and experiences I encounter on the Pembrokeshire coast will always evoke a more ‘immediate’ sense of calm and contemplation of what it is to breathe and be human in contrast to Times Square; but I do think it’s possible to find a connection or nucleus within the city that can ‘reveal’ the essence of the ‘spiritual’ from its polar opposite. Abstraction is generally considered a genre that requires an evolved mental state, to be able to see more than is plainly evident. Do you think this is a difficult time for the genre, especially in painting? I really believe that our ability to see, experience and connect with our world, let alone painting is radically deteriorating. I see an analogy between the melting ice caps, fast disappearing with the effects of climate change and the ever decreasing ability of our young adults to ‘see’ the world. One of the fastest growing industries in the world is the ‘testing’ industry. The vast majority of our education systems comply all too readily with this one way to measure ‘success’, we are un-educating our young away from the true human capacity as makers and creatives who engage with our world. Painting takes time, time to make and time to experience, something, which we find difficult in much of our society. There are three principal areas which are significant in my work here; firstly, the proposition that the paintings need to be sensed to be experienced; secondly, the concept that these paintings are mindscapes; and thirdly that of the contemplative. All reaffirm that these paintings go some way to re-present what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls ‘Inscape’, which is what emerges when landscape is penetrated intellectually and emotionally, his vision of something greater than himself, which he saw as God: As in the opening line of God’s Grandeur [Hopkins’ 1877 poem], ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God.’ It is this ‘inscape’ that I connect with when looking at De Kooning or Joan Mitchell and Hodgkin.Could you talk about the artists who inspire you?The work of Joan Mitchell, De Kooning and Titian have remained constant influences throughout. The early days of the Slade referenced Leon Golub and Michael Sandle, then Masaccio, Pollock, Auerbach, Ayres and Hodgkin. I think the most powerful influence upon my work is Titian’s “The Flaying of Marsyas” (1566) seen at the Royal Academy exhibition “The Genius of Venice,” in 1983. Here, Apollo skins the flute player Marsyas who is hung upside down. The surface touch, the experience of ‘visual touch’, which connected with my sensibility as a painter has been undeniable. In close up, the surface of “The Flaying of Marsyas” is rich and intensely interwoven with layers of oil glaze; the handling is experimental, playful and contemporary. It is the balance between ‘subject matter and process’ that Titian achieves, which I have tried to underpin in my work throughout.Could you talk about the choice of medium for representing the Pembrokeshire landscape? I would like to read about your choice of thin sheets of porcelain and Khadi Paper. Walking is the primary starting point, which enables my experience and understanding of the Pembrokeshire coast. This coupled with drawing, writing, taking rubbings and photographing are all processes, which allow me to ‘learn’ the landscape. The materiality of paint itself is key to these works, thick and thin oil, layered, scraped and wiped away, the balance between construction and destruction are so important to the creative act of painting. Colour is so important to my understanding of the west Wales coast, yet I am aware these paintings need to resonate and communicate to an audience that may not know Pembrokeshire, therefore they have to speak beyond the literal or illustrative references of ‘Place’, as I said they have to be sensed. The materiality and innate emotional content of the linen, oil, wax, porcelain, handmade Khadi paper is the first point of reference or connection for the viewer, therefore it is imperative that I harness and embrace these in my work.Your body of work is highly philosophical in nature. The existential questions that you write about in your statement in the catalogue have a resonance in some ancient philosophical schools of the world. Does any particular school of thought influence you?On hindsight, it has been the creative act that has aligned me with these philosophies rather than the other way around. Early Pembrokeshire paintings remind me of Zen Gardens and the sculptural energies of space and form, the meditative and contemplative elements that I hope to induce in the viewer is so important. Other than personally meditating I have no singular school of philosophy, but am very interested and active in researching relevant literature, which helps my teaching more than my painting, I think.Does your engagement with this subject continue even after the current exhibition? Of course, I cannot see an end to this work at all, I’m always going to walk the Pembrokeshire coast and re-tune my senses in greater depth in order to push and further question my painting language. I’m so aware that there are so many areas of the world I would like to work with such as Alaska, Greenland and the Antarctic. The last two years I have been experimenting with porcelain and sculpture alongside painting. This new work has been recently exhibited in a show in Wales titled ‘Ooze’. Porcelain shards secrete oxide stains within wall installations; light-boxes present almost geological finds in the form of press-molds and sandblasted porcelain and glass, stones from the coast are fired within porcelain embraces. The two processes of paint and clay will work side by side for future exhibitions, all inspired by the Pembrokeshire coast.“Brendan Stuart Burns: Flow & Pulse,” is on view at Rosenberg & Co., 19 East, 66th Street, New York, NY 10065, Monday to Saturday 10am – 6pm, through June 4Follow@ARTINFOIndia
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