Robert McBurney West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
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My background is as a photo-journalist, a still life advertising photographer and a writer. Despite these other interests, I've been in love with paintings all my life and I have always painted. In very late retirement, I have become a full-time studio painter. Like many of us, my influences are legion; but I am particularly affected by Nicolas de Stael and by Keith Vaughan.

The majority of paintings that I am making at the moment are non -figurative. They are colourful and abstract and concerned with oil paint; its texture, its surface and with shape and colour relationships. Some time ago I came across the work of De Stael, and in one of those Eureka moments I realised that I should move towards abstraction. The resultant escape from the tyranny of the subject is, at the moment, a positive. My process is a continuing conversation between the original idea and the behaviour of the paint on the canvas. Often trying to realise the original idea is a struggle but occasionally I'm surprised by passages of paint. It is as if the hand that holds the brush has its own agenda. Most artists will recognise this and be thankful for it. Of course, everything comes from within and the secret is knowing what to keep! I am interested in the whole journey of painting. I assemble my own canvases , make my own mediums and thanks to YouTube, I make shadow frames. I use a lot of impasto mediums, wax and varnishes et cetera. Much of my work is on quite large canvases. An old adage in photography is to get close and then closer still. I am finding that this applies to paintings. Using a viewfinder to isolate small parts of the painting suggests ideas for a new work I like the idea of a progression, a continuity, a common thread. Images must stand-alone but I like to think that each of them has a back story, in effect, part of a family.

Artwork

Red Stripe, Oil on linen, 2024

Robert McBurney West Yorkshire, United Kingdom Back to profiles Invite to apply

Artwork

Robert McBurney West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Back to profiles