Art Archives - Greg Mason Burns

Do You Understand Art

Portrait of Mrs. Edward L. Davis and Her Son, Livingston Davis, oil on canvas by John Singer Sargent, 1890; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Do You Understand Art is the fourth in a series of guests posts by my collectors and fans. In this post, Nivea Bona reflects on how art makes us feel something and how we try to rationalize that even when there's no need to do so. Below, Bona shares how this notion challenged her in other parts of her life, and I challenge you to tell me which side I lean toward: intent or in-the-moment...

January 16, 2024

Greg

in Art, Criticism, Exhibit

Public Art Commission: Kennebec Valley Community College – Fairfield, ME

These are the murals I created for Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, ME (KVCC) via the Percent for Art Program run by the Maine Arts Commission. They are of a stained-glass style and represent the tools, trades, workers, and landmarks of the area and the school's academic program. My murals in Brunswick, ME received a lot of great feedback due to their color and stained-glass concept. I decided to expand on this concept and apply for several other projects. This KVCC project was actually my first competitive commission where I won the contract. In August of 2022, I was...

April 13, 2023

Greg

in Painting, Public Art

Cityscape Series: Behind the Paintings

These cityscape paintings are some of the first that I did as an artist. It is not a coincidence that I created them when I first moved to Brazil. There's a huge difference between small-town Maine and big-city Brazil, and it's not the type of difference you get between small towns and big cities anywhere. City II - Oil on Canvas (2012) I had lived in several cities before moving to Brazil, but the level of caution that I needed to exercise with regards to violence was vastly different in Brazil than those other cities. I went from a sense confidence in...

April 6, 2022

Greg

in Behind the Artwork, Painting

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

Reception Theory as a Visual Art

A Definition of Reception Theory Reception Theory judges an audience's response to a particular communication method. In particular, it began as an analysis of how readers interpret literary texts. Interpretation is inherently built into Reception Theory. This means there is a gap, a difference of opinion, between what the communicator meant and what the audience understood. Reception Theory academics often tackle the two sides of the theory: what is communicated and what is interpreted. How I Interpret Reception Theory I work specifically with that space in between what is communicated and what is interpreted. To me, that space is fundamentally emotional. This is...

March 19, 2022

Greg

in Art, Art Project, Artistic Process, Contemporary Art, Criticism, Drawing, Painting, Photography, Reductivism, Video

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...

March 19, 2022

Greg

in Art, Art Project, Artistic Process, Painting, Photography

Public Art Commission: Brunswick, ME

I never expected to anything to come from joining the ArtWalk in Brunswick, ME. For one, the ArtWalk is mostly craft works. There are some fine artists, but very few abstract artists show here. Because I'm new to the area, I've been trying to drive traffic to my studio at the Fort Andross Mill. The ArtWalk is well-attended, so I figured I'd catch someone's attention there. What ended up happening was behind the scenes, and I got my first public art commission out it. First Parish Church in-progress in my studio The process was simple. The Downtown Association sent out an email...

November 9, 2021

Greg

in Painting, Public Art

Color Field Painting

[caption id="attachment_3617" align="alignleft" width="300"] Color Field #4 - Oil on Wood[/caption] What is Color Field Painting? Color Field painting, a derivative of Abstract Expressionism, is essentially the attention to color in abstraction as opposed to form or structure. The early Color Field painters, such as Mark Rothko, Clement Greenberg, and Clyfford Still created large works such that when one was standing up close one was absorbed in the color. Color Field has developed since then with various tendencies moving both further from shape and form and closer to it. What I'm Doing I'm developing color field in a way that combats the color against...

April 1, 2018

Greg

in Art Project, Painting

Fiscal Sponsorship for Artists

Why do we have fiscal sponsorship for artists? Anyone remember Piss Christ by Andres Serrano? Yeah, that one - the one where Serrano received about $20,000 in tax-payer money to create art. In my mind, nothing wrong with that - he's an artist who had a provocative photograph, and that's pretty normal in contemporary art - but there were several conservative politicians who did take exception and, as luck would have it, these politicians managed to change how the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) would distribute tax dollars to artists. [caption id="attachment_2964" align="alignright" width="145"] Immersion (Piss Christ) by Andres Serrano (Image...

December 13, 2017

Greg

in Art

Abstract Minimalist Portraits

I haven't done a Kickstarter proejct for a while, mostly because I'm just not the kind of artist who needs a lot of "one-off" projects fulfilled. My most pressing need at the moment is studio space, and I've been working on my Patreon page to get me to a point where I can have on-gong long-term relationships that help me create art on a regular basis. However, when I saw that Kickstarter was going to be doing a Commissions project, I knew that this type of project would work well for me on that platform. The project is specifically about...

November 6, 2017

Greg

in Drawing, Reductivism

Collaboration: Zaratan by Greg Mason Burns and Daniel Gawronski

[caption id="attachment_3010" align="alignleft" width="240"] Daniel's Trees, as drawn simply by me as a visual example[/caption] I recently did a residency in Lisbon, Portugal and while there I met the other artist-in-residence, Daniel Gawronski. Daniel is an Australian artist who works primarily with sound art. His method is interesting in that he takes images from the natural environment and uses those to map musical compositions. We both attended the residency at Zaratan Arte Contemporanea in Lisbon, but this collaboration was an accident. For the audio, Gawronski used a photograph of trees from a forest Sintra, Portugal, outside Lisbon, to create a music scale....

January 12, 2017

Greg

in Art, Sound Art, Video