Leafscapes - Back to the Land
The Spring Equinox is towards the end of March, the climate can still be awful but hope is in the air. I got my first Vaccine shot against Covid-19 that same week and slowly started to come out of my cocoon, where I had been huddled along with my creativity for a long year. Some called it "Covid brain fog". I wore bright green to my appointment, the colour of new growth, slim pants and a sleeveless top, like a strong stem. The colour of re-emerging leaves.
I pushed myself to do some work in the dark days, working on memories based on travel; but it wasn't until I turned back to painting nature that my inner muse was given her scape.
I was drawn to some of my earlier works featuring leaves in varying shades, always so contemplative, a magnetic force. Turning to producing new works I was encouraged to discover that leaves again had magic.
Alice Burton, 2021
Remember Me
A group show of Yumart Gallery artists
September 11 to October 2, 2021
The Voyage 1988 Oil stick on paper 33 x 43 in
My father died when I was age 10. My mother lived with us the last few years of her life. During that time I had a recurring dream of the scene in this work. It depicts my Mom, pictured in the lower left already to go somewhere on a voyage. She never needed much luggage. She was a great traveler in her youth, going on a number of sea voyages. I loved to travel with her, but not this time. I feared going with her & seemed unable to get organized. That is me in the lower right, my suitcase is empty & I am undecided between the many things in my disheveled closet.
Of course this is her last voyage or death as alluded to by the tomb like bath in the bathroom. Instead of the boatman Charon on the river Styx, the ship is an ocean liner. The figure behind the closet door is a reference to my spouse urging me to stay. There has been references made that the children in single parent families due to death, fear their own death at the time that their surviving parent dies. My mother lived 35 years after my father died on her own. Happy to report that I am still going strong.
Alice Burton, 2021
The Pleasure Principle
What motivates some individuals to seek the path to creativity? The answers are as diverse, as numerous as the forms that artistic endeavours pursue. Some need to express anger, frustration or sorrow at life. Others to reflect periods in history either politically or narratively. Then there are those who strive to achieve beauty, a complex and mysterious quality. Beauty, as the saying goes, is in the eye... No matter your motivation, creation requires the artist to put subjective concerns aside.
Many artists marvel at the feeling they get upon regarding their own work, that some spirit came and made it when they weren’t watching. Such a pleasurable sensation, putting all conscious thinking aside, just losing oneself in layering colours, creating texture, drawing lines dictated by the soul, then standing back, regarding. How did it happen? Is the act all the same, placing notes or words in succession, feeling clay under your hands, or the resistance of materials? A marvel. A joy experienced by the creator. We must not be overcome by frustration or disappointment in the object’s production. It is the act that is so pleasurably profound.
In this series of works I have concentrated on manifestations of beauty and joy in my daily experiences. Please share.
Alice Burton 2019
September 2018
An email received this summer from a former client - Much appreciated
"Dear Ms. Burton,
Just thought it might be interesting for you to see one of your old paintings. I purchased this from an exhibit that you were having in a small gallery in Cabbagetown years ago. I have been living in Switzerland the last ten years and this painting has travelled with me everywhere I go. It has lived in NYC and also Munich for years. I have enjoyed it always. It seems to differ a lot from your paintings of late.
Greetings from Rapperswil on Lake Zürich,
Eileen Radostits"
October 2016
July 2017
March 2015
A special commission
Museum installation
The Arthur Child Heritage Centre of the 1000 Islands
In the Summer months I spend a good deal of time at my studio on the St. Lawrence river, the inspiration of much of my work. I have become involved with the very charming Heritage Museum in Gananoque.
As part of their permanent collection, they have a fabulous model of a Victorian cottage totally furnished in the period. It is portrayed standing by the river’s edge in a group of birch, which are illustrated by an enlarged segment of my painting
“Night Watch.”
May 2015
at 401 Richmond Street West
Alice Burton will have an open studio.
Saturday May 23, 10 am to 5 pm.
April 2015
THOUSANDS ISLANDS LIFE MAGAZINE
Article by Susan W. Smith
"How do you capture an inspired view of the River? In memories? Perhaps digitally, or yesterday on film? Alice Burton’s memories are captured on canvas and exhibited in art galleries, close to home in Toronto and Montreal, or touring in New York, Europe, and South America." more...
April 2014
