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By
Linda Salvay
There is a haunting beauty to be found in a garbage truck. Or
a grocery cart. Or a maze of empty office cubicles. As seen
through the eyes of Jason Burrell, even the most mundane trappings
of everyday life are endowed with an artful presence as they
speak volumes about the society that created them - and the
artist who interprets them. Burrell, Assistant Professor of
Art at Saint Mary College, recently exhibited a small but imposing
collection of his paintings in a one-man show at Leavenworth's
Carnegie Arts Center. That show highlighted his penchant for
"common" subjects gleaned from modern life; he seems particularly
intrigued by hulking pieces of machinery like garbage trucks,
streetsweepers or construction vehicles. "My paintings are a
revealing examination of daily existence. The subjects are 'everyday,'
causing people to see something in a new way through tension,
movement and placement," he said. "I hope the art provokes change.
I know it does within me."
Burrell often employs a combination of materials - charcoal,
pencil, acrylic and watercolor - on paper, limiting his palette
to black and white with a hint of a third muted color. "Black-and-white
is closer to the issues that I hope my work addresses," he said.
"I try to strike a balance between optimism and pessimism, hope
and despair, light and shadow, the illusion of an image and
the two-dimensional surface of a piece of paper." He unabashedly
allows paint to drip down the paper as he works, explaining,
"It is honest. It doesn't need to be a perfect illusion. If
you want that, take a photograph." Ironically, it was a high
school photography class that directed Burrell's artistic focus.
In fact, he affirmed his love of art while still in high school.
"All my classmates and I were thinking about what to take in
college. I decided that I only have one life and I was having
the best time making art." From there, his career was a natural
progression.
While he loves making art, he also loves teaching it. "We teach
the students that they each have something significant to say,"
he said of the fine arts program at Saint Mary College. "Their
voices will make a difference in many peoples' lives, but particularly
their own. "Students arrive with ideas - and some come in with
no ideas - but by the time they leave, each has a voice, a greater
personal identity, and is ready to take charge of some piece
of existence and change it." Burrell fosters that "voice" through
every class he teaches: drawing, painting, block printing, children's
book illustration, computer graphics, art history, advanced
studio classes and portfolio preparation. Students, he says,
"demand honesty and energy from a teacher. There's no resting
on laurels." For Burrell, there seems to be no resting, period.
He gains as much from his students as they do from him. "It's
like birds traveling in formation. We help each other along
the way." While Burrell admits that he'd have more time to create
his own work if he weren't teaching, he won't even consider
that as an option. "There's too much energy coming from the
teaching to ever think of giving it up. Even if my painting
career skyrocketed, I would continue to teach. The youth, energy,
novelty, rigor, constant questions - it's too fresh and honest
of an environment."
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