Long View Gallery
1234 9th St. NW
Washington DC
Thursday, September, 1, 2011
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Opening Reception:
"Containment and Diversion"
by
Thomas Burkett
RSVP by August 30th to info@longviewgallery.com
Catering provided by Windows Catering
Growing up in the grandeur of the Western United States, Thomas Burkett gleaned an impression of invincibility and an air of confidence that abundant land resources is a right of passage. Now, as an outside observer, he realizes his utopian West is both a place of grandeur and illusion. An urban identity now confronts his notion of abundance with the reality of a water crisis and a realization that we have settled in an environment that challenges our subversive tactics of control. Determined to examine our control of water, the work in Containment and Diversion portrays the damming, diverting, and polluting of water – life’s most vital substance.
“Man made structures that the river encounters become fixtures of the land, blurring the line between a truly natural environment and one that is contrived and artificial. In frequent travels back to my birthplace and specifically to regions called Salmon River and Hells Canyon I have run in to the confrontation of my past associations with these places. As the environment changes and we construct buildings and implement ways to constrain our surroundings the potential for a natural human experience with the space suffers.”
Reexamining the visually cataloged images he has of the West, in its most sublime and aesthetic states, Burkett, through his work, confronts our attempts to conquer, convert, and inhabit such a hostile environment. Burkett’s abstract paintings, a mixture of oil, acrylic and concrete, document the flow of water as it pours over mountains, rushes down rivers, disappears in to canyons, swells behind dams, and diverts in to canals. Abstract in style, the color palette in undeniably a reference to his life out West. Water is present in varying shades of blue while the gorgeous natural architecture of the Grand Canyon rings through subtle hues of orange and yellow.
Catering provided by Windows Catering
Growing up in the grandeur of the Western United States, Thomas Burkett gleaned an impression of invincibility and an air of confidence that abundant land resources is a right of passage. Now, as an outside observer, he realizes his utopian West is both a place of grandeur and illusion. An urban identity now confronts his notion of abundance with the reality of a water crisis and a realization that we have settled in an environment that challenges our subversive tactics of control. Determined to examine our control of water, the work in Containment and Diversion portrays the damming, diverting, and polluting of water – life’s most vital substance.
“Man made structures that the river encounters become fixtures of the land, blurring the line between a truly natural environment and one that is contrived and artificial. In frequent travels back to my birthplace and specifically to regions called Salmon River and Hells Canyon I have run in to the confrontation of my past associations with these places. As the environment changes and we construct buildings and implement ways to constrain our surroundings the potential for a natural human experience with the space suffers.”
Reexamining the visually cataloged images he has of the West, in its most sublime and aesthetic states, Burkett, through his work, confronts our attempts to conquer, convert, and inhabit such a hostile environment. Burkett’s abstract paintings, a mixture of oil, acrylic and concrete, document the flow of water as it pours over mountains, rushes down rivers, disappears in to canyons, swells behind dams, and diverts in to canals. Abstract in style, the color palette in undeniably a reference to his life out West. Water is present in varying shades of blue while the gorgeous natural architecture of the Grand Canyon rings through subtle hues of orange and yellow.
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