Burton Van Deusen

smboats@optonline.net
www.burtsart.com

Burt Van Deusen's early work was more traditional landscapes: studio images developed from photos and sketches, with an eye towards a less traditional view like sunsets looking away from the sun. He was a Rear Guard painter. Van Deusen's clouds always generated a great deal of the emotional content and over time the “landscape” part became a small strip along the bottom edge of the canvas. He was searching for ways to logically place the “strip of ground” at different positions on the canvas: hillsides along the edges, at the top as reflections, or in the middle between parting clouds. He always thought of the surprising placement of the “land” as humorous and the clouds an important emotional underpinning of the ideas.

"Recently I have mostly abandoned references to terra firma as such, with the “narrative clouds” struggling for color, movement, space, densities…fighting to claim their place." -- Burt Van Deusen