| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Jeff Burgess combines the printer’s art with the painter’s techniques. His career has spanned commercial work for various corporations, teaching, and pursuing his own artistic interests. A graduate with Honours from what was the Alberta College of Art, specializing in Visual Communications, he also attended the Illustrators’ Workshop and Seminar in New York. In 1982 he exhibited with three others in Four Illustrators Paint, shown at Beaver House Gallery in Edmonton and at the Muttart Gallery in Calgary. Over the years he has worked for advertising firms in Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Since 1984 he has lived in Vancouver, where he has also been a faculty member of the IDEA program at Capilano University, teaching Illustration and Post-Design Illustration.
In his own practice, he works in oils, acrylics, stains, plus graphite drawing on watercolour or rag papers. He has long been intrigued by European art traditions, whether those of the Old Masters or of the Expressionists, and realizes some of their themes in contemporary terms. His work is predominantly representational, dealing with human faces and figures, sometimes in a surrealistic manner. His work often satirizes clichéd social situations, and explores the hidden qualities of human nature.
Burgess has concentrated on portraiture, itself a historic genre, but focusing more on the painting process itself than on the artist-sitter relationship. He often produces multi-faced panels of small, often monochromatic, faces, all individuals but forming a mosaic or grid. He experiments with distorted facial expressions, particularly in the “Laughing Portraits” series.
He has also produced figurative and ensemble paintings, drawing on the traditions of European history painting. The massive “Dinner Party” or “The Red Brigade”, depicting powerful characters such as modern-day papal figures, explore and satirize spirituality, religion and politics. “The Dinner Party” was shown at Liquidity Wines Art Gallery, Okanagan Falls, BC, in 2017. Similarly, Burgess’ architecture paintings draw on classical mythology, literature and modern symbolism.
His paintings are found in Canada, the US and Europe, including at Microsoft Corporation (Seattle) and at the Calgary Contemporary Arts Foundation. |