Brody Parker Burroughs
Road Crew, one of the paintings in my portfolio, depicts men in a workshop at their morning stations. We view the space from the slouching vantage of my seat on the bench next to Jim Davis, where I once struggled daily to shake off the comfort of sleep and confront whatever labor would be assigned to me. I have always worked with my hands. Now, I have my own workshop, and my hands have been making paintings. It’s manual labor: studio maintenance, preparation of material, framing, crating and moving art from one location to another, and ultimately the hand on paper and canvas. But when I make objects that reflect the world as I see it, my hands are aligned with my senses, emotions and logic. My whole self is working to create an object - a physical manifestation of my voice and vision.
I create paintings on a large scale, relative to myself, because I want the viewer to relate directly to the spaces created in the painting. The paintings feel heavy on the wall. Their solid stretchers are enclosed in white box frames, protruding from the wall and breeching the viewer’s space with an imposing physical presence. The surface is heavily worked and strokes are evident, but the viewer is quickly pulled into the painting’s third dimension, through perspective, scale, and atmosphere. Familiar gestures and environments engage the viewer. A suggestion of narrative provokes the imagination, and the viewer begins to draw conclusions of his or her own.
I paint images from life, my memory and my imagination, composing not just an illusion, but the union of vision - how I see - with my sense and understanding of space, form, movement, and even thought. After studying in Italy I was affected heavily by the scale, style and form of Renaissance and Baroque painting. As my work has evolved, I have sensed the influence of Edward Manet, Isabel Bishop, Edward Hopper, Gerhard Richter, Jerome Witkin, and recently, Neo Rauch.
Lately the people in my paintings have been strangers in public settings, often in institutional or infrastructural environments, such as schools or public transit. The situations depicted are sometimes mundane, at other times fantastic. Watching strangers is very similar to looking at figurative painting; one finds oneself inventing a context, constructing a greater narrative from the few clues available. I want people to enter my work and engage their imagination, to examine and reflect upon the moments, relationships, and distances of the worlds I’ve created. If I can communicate with the viewer in this way, perhaps there will be fewer strangers sharing the planet with me.
Brody Parker Burroughs received his MFA in Painting from Indiana University, and BA in Studio Art from Kenyon College.
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