Trevor Burgess

Artist statement

Concepts
For several years I have been making paintings inspired by people's everyday lives in the urban space of the city. I work from photographs which I take myself, but the process of painting leads to images that do not attempt to replicate the conventions of photography. I use a glossy, wet paint which gives intensity to the flashes of bright colour that animate the paintings. The fluidity, coarseness and texture of the paint contribute to a sense of the thickening of the air in urban environments, the discontinuity of visual experience, and the fleeting glimpse.

This way of painting evolved out of earlier more improvisatory work (see Playground, Family: our Picture), in which I explored the themes of parent, children and families in a less specific context.

Recently I have been working on a series called "A Place to Live" whose starting point was estate agents' adverts in newspapers. There are now over 50 paintings reflecting the variety of domestic architecture, and exploring images of the home. The paintings use thinner glazes of colour onto plywood.

Influences
I am influenced by what I see around me, living an urban life. Images of all sorts can affect and influence my painting. 

Career path
I studied literature at the University of East Anglia. Following this I trained as Assistant Curator at the Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art for four years. I set up the Warehouse Artists Studios in Norwich where I based my practice for seven years. During this period I was closely involved with the artist-run studio movement, and worked with the National Artists Association to launch a Code of Practice for the Visual Arts. I took part in the site specific exhibition, Wholesale in 1996, for which I filled the walls of a former cold store with a decorative cycle of 18 paintings of massed fruit and vegetable produce. In the same year my work was selected for the Kettles Yard Open, and the International Triennial of Painting, Sofia, Bulgaria.

In 1997 I moved to Barcelona, studying on the Winchester School of Art MA European Fine Art. During the MA I produced a series of large, figurative paintings exploring the relationships of families and children, which, following my graduation in 1998, were exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Galerie Daniel Wahrenberger, Zurich, Switzerland. In Barcelona I also made a series of work about Castellers, the popular Catalan custom of creating human towers as a street display. These pictures explored relationships between people, engaged in a highly structured, public, social activity. The Castellers were exhibited at a solo exhibition at the Galeria Groc in Barcelona and toured in Catalonia.

Following my return to the UK in 1999, I developed my current series of work influenced by the urban environment. In 2007 I showed this work in solo exhibitions in cultural centres in the towns of El Campello, Alicante, and Blanca, Murcia, and at the Liceo de Alicante, Spain. In 2011 six paintings from the series "A Place to Live" were selected by Time Out critic Ossian Ward for The Discerning Eye 2011 at the Mall Galleries, and one of these paintings won The Regional Artist Award for the South East. In 2013-15, I am showing as part of "Developing Artists" at Devonshire's Solicitors at Finsbury Circus, London, a project curated by Wallspace in the Workspace.