Greg Mason Burns

March 2022

Walking on Both Sides Part 3 is a mixed media collage using newspaper headlines to contrast reality.

Manipulation of the Art Market

The manipulation of the art market is the stuff of legends and actually pretty transparent. It's run "in secrecy" by the super wealthy in a way to make them more wealthy. It's about intimidation, and that game works for them. This is why I always tell people to buy what they like. Don't buy art to match the décor (the art will outlast the décor) and don't buy art to compete as an investor either (the game is rigged before you even enter it). Artists suffer the worst consequences, but there is a way to solve this: buy local artists...

Manipulation #11 - House on Newcastle is an abstract photo of Galway, Ireland using oil pastel and acylic paint with red, green, and blue coloring.

The NFT Market is a Massive Ponzi Scheme

[caption id="attachment_4568" align="alignleft" width="225"] Manipulation #11 - House on Newcastle Photography on Archival Paper (2021)[/caption] Seriously, if you're considering getting into the NFT market, seller beware. It is not really buyer beware if you can convince people to jump into the game. Simply put, the more people in the game the easier it is to sell and make a profit. I can't say it as well as Canadian Artist Kimberly Parker puts it, so you should read her article posted below. In short, she did a massive data scrape of those markets that sell NFTs, and the results show that the...

Essen Coal #1 is an abstract photo of the Welterbe Zollverein mine in Essen, Germany.

Reception Theory as a Visual Art

Introduction of Reception Theory as a Visual Art Reception Theory as a visual art can be described as thus: Imagine a town, or a village, that does not exist in our reality but we know it is there nonetheless. We cannot visit it or touch the buildings or talk In order for this town to exist, this town must have been created before. And it was, by two entities. Actually, it was not created by two entities, but by the void that exists between the two entities instead. The town exists in the void. One entity (the communicator) provides the information of what this...

First Parish of the Abstract Artist abstract photo using blue, green, grey, and yellow

Redirecting the Message

Redirecting the Message: A Definition Redirecting the Message is an art project that revolves around misinformation and communication bias. I take images, words, and objects and re-purpose them into other forms so that a new message is created from the old one. This is a part of my Reception Theory project, which relates to communication and interpretation. Therefore, the purpose is to show how one message can easily be changed to mean something different. In other words, information is easily re-purposed to fit the communicator's agenda. As a result, the audience must decide what is real or not. What to Look For For instance, if...

UNH Museum of Art

UNH Museum of Art: On the Edge

I was happy to have been accepted into the UNH Museum of Art exhibit On the Edge, which exhibited from [caption id="attachment_5055" align="alignright" width="300"] Una Vista de Ardales - Charcoal on Paper (2017)[/caption] January through March of 2022. The image they accepted was a charcoal minimalist drawing of a small town in Andalucía, Spain. We stayed in Ardales during a climbing trip to the El Chorro climbing area just west of Malaga. I actually created several drawings and paintings of the area. Una Vista de Ardales, charcoal on paper (2017), is a drawing of the downtown area looking up the hill toward the...