1
HEARTFELT THANKS TO THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS PROJECT POSSIBLE The Beaverbrook Art Gallery New Brunswick College of Craft and Design The George Fry Gallery Committee The Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation Kâté Braydon Peter Buckland Nancy Bauer Carol Collicutt Ray Cronin Terry Graff Kerry Lawlor Cathy Burns Lyons and Rod Lyons Dana O’Regan Silas Robinson Roger Smith Harriet Taylor Graphic Design by Courtney Ivey Photographs of Artwork by Roger Smith Cover Image: Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 60” x 54”, circa 1992 ISBN: 978-1-7751558-1-2 Copyright © 2020 George Fry Gallery All text and artwork is copyright © 2020 and held by the creator. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior written consent of the copyright holder except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Rick Burns
December 3rd, 1949 — November 9th, 2004
5
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARY ELLEN (BARNSON) KENNAH
OLYMPIA II
Contents FOREWORD
1
A R T I S T S TAT E M E N T
2
BIOGR APHY
4
S TAT E M E N T F R O M T H E FA M I LY
8
CO N T R I B U TO R E S S AY S TERRY GR AFF
10
PETER BUCKL AND
20
R AY C R O N I N
24
C A R O L CO L L I C U T T
28
DA N A O ’ R E G A N
32
SIL AS ROBINSON
36
H A R R I E T TAY LO R
40
CO N T R I B U T E R B I O S
45
E X H I B I T I O N H I S TO R Y
51
LIST OF WORKS
57
8
Foreword My goal for this project is to honour Rick Burns’ artistic legacy and introduce him to a new generation of artists. The catalogue the George Fry Gallery is presenting extends the exhibition we are hosting and gives our audience a larger window into Rick Burns’ life and artistic practice. He maintained a vibrant studio and built significant bodies of work that reached critical acclaim, was a beloved educator, and founded the gallery at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. When his sister, Cathy Burns Lyons, approached us last year we knew immediately a new exhibition of Rick’s work in Fredericton should and would happen at the George Fry Gallery. Rick taught at NBCCD when I studied there, then we became colleagues, while I simultaneously ran Gallery Connexion, at the back of the Justice Building. They had
a canteen and I had a key connecting the two buildings and would let Rick into the gallery where he would carry on to lunch with Carol Collicutt in her studio. Rick knew the art of saying yes; he made you feel like you were the most important person in the room. He called me Darling. I later learned he called others Darling, too. I honestly thought I was the only one! One day, I met Rick in the hallway. He had been asking me to invoice him for photographing his work. “Darling,” he said, “you’ll have to come to the studio.” My heart skipped a beat. I arrived; he told me to pick a work from a stack of finished pieces on Mylar. I wanted a piece I photographed when he won the Strathbutler Award, and sure enough, that little face haunting me was at the top of the pile. To this day, As if it Were Water is my most prized possession.
Karen Ruet
GEORGE FRY GALLERY COORDINATOR UNTITLED
1
Artist Statement R I CK B U R N S
Sixteen years ago, I began to discover that the central theme in my work would be containment. I wanted to explore that condition, not necessarily from the point of view of someone confined but perhaps from someone who had come to terms with confinement or physical restriction. I created small constructions by manipulating little sticks and threads and seeds covered by translucent papers placed in glass covered boxes. After a few years of experimenting with abstraction and developing a painting vocabulary, I moved toward large canvases flooding the surface with color that flowed over and around a single figure. I scratched into wet pigment exposing the underpainting. I was left with vestigial forms that struggled to free themselves from the restraint of line.
2
FROM A COLLECTION OF FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS, RICK
Now when I go into the studio, I find myself drawing. It’s the most immediate medium. It almost has no one in mind, just my own expression. This new work, economic in line and minimal in color, continues to investigate the themes of containment and isolation. The figures, impaired in some way, are confined in a stingy space. They exist without light or air. I continue to describe, through drawing, the constant fight to become whole to move away from physical corruptibility and move toward equilibrium.
Rick Burns 3
Biography R I CK B U R N S
“Rick” was born Richard Michael Burns in Middleton, Nova Scotia on December 3, 1949, to Inez (Donahue) Burns and John H. Burns (who was enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and served in WWII). The family’s last posting was in Chatham, New Brunswick. They settled in Fredericton, New Brunswick in the late sixties. Rick’s post-secondary education took place at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton and, after taking Kent Thompson’s Creative Writing course, Rick had a number of short stories and plays produced on CBC Radio. He twice participated in TNB’s Brave New Words. 4
FROM A COLLECTION OF FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS, RICK
5
6
After apprenticing with West coast artist Rosemary James Cross, in the mid-seventies, Rick began painting and sculpting. His first solo exhibit was at the Landmark Gallery, in Fredericton, in 1980, followed by an extensive exhibition record, including a major solo exhibition and an accompanying catalogue, The Shape of Absence, published by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 1992 for the Studio Watch Series. A major retrospective of his work was shown posthumously in 2006, again at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery entitled Between Presence and Absence. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including but not limited to the UNB Permanent Collection, the New Brunswick Museum Collection, the Bank of Montreal, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the New Brunswick Art Bank, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Rick was prolific with his production, working in series, and was honoured with grants and awards, including an Exploration Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, four Creation Grants from the New Brunswick Arts Branch, a grant from the New Brunswick Co-operation Agreement on Cultural Development and the prestigious Strathbutler Award from the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation. Not only was Rick a founding member of Gallery Connexion, Fredericton’s only artist-run centre, he had a studio there for years before he moved out on his own to a studio on Main St., close to his family residence. Rick collaborated with many artists, was not only a playwright but also acted, and did choreography, he mentored many young artists and was instrumental, as a member of Gallery Connexion, in fostering awareness of contemporary art practice in Fredericton Rick was beloved as an instructor and was a vibrant member of the faculty at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design where he taught drawing and mixed media painting from 1984 until his death in 2004. He founded the college art gallery. He served as the visual arts representative on the New Brunswick Arts Board and was an appointed member of the Cultural Task Force for the Province of New Brunswick.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KÂTÉ BRAYDON
7
Statement
FR O M T H E FA M I LY Sixteen years ago, on October 31st, 2004, Rick went by ambulance to the hospital. Not one of us knew he would not come home. I remember Mom and Dad always praising Rick and me when we achieved a high mark or did well on a task or in a performance. I had my talents and Rick had his, each one very different. I can hear Mom’s voice clearly saying, “Ya dun good!” It was a true Miramichi pat on our backs. I had difficulty while learning to speak and could never say Rick or Richard clearly, so I always called him “Kiki!” No one corrected that or made fun of me and it stuck until we were older. Mom also said when he passed away that God gave us extended time with Rick. The surgeons who released Rick and sent him home from his two years in hospital said that he’d live ten, and we had him for forty years! So, if you view this Exhibition virtually because of Covid-19, or if you see Rick’s work in person at the George Fry Gallery, please feel free to express out loud to Rick Burns, Mark-Maker: “Kiki, Ya dun good!” Along with Karen Ruet’s vision for this exhibition, Mark-Maker, Rod and I release this body of artwork and photographs to be viewed as Ricks’ journey through the art world. With kind regards and heartfelt thanks, please enjoy our memories.
Cathy Burns Lyons
8
FROM A COLLECTION OF FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS, RICK (FAR RIGHT)
10
Presenting Absence THE ALLUSIVE ART OF RICK BURNS
As long as a human eye is looking, there is always something to see. To look at something which is “empty” is still to be looking, still to be seeing something—if only the ghosts of one’s expectations. In order to perceive fullness, one must retain an acute sense of the emptiness which marks it off; conversely, in order to perceive emptiness, one must apprehend other zones of the world as full. The Aesthetics of Silence, Susan Sontag
SUSPENDED FIGURE II
11
The subtly calibrated mark-making of Rick Burns bridges the idioms of figuration and abstraction to kindle a meta-reflection on the human condition. Ghostly, indeterminate images of the vulnerable body and residual traces of its absence form the leitmotif of his oeuvre: the paradox of presence in absence. While deeply rooted in personal experience, his drawings, paintings, collages, sculpture, and installations reveal universal truths about the limitations and restrictions of the body, about the memory of trauma and place of healing behind the wound, and about the struggle for embodied self awareness, emergent wholeness, and transcendence. For many artists, resonant personal experiences or watershed events in their life constitute fertile ground that invariably influence their art, while also informing viewers’ perception and appreciation if they are made aware of them. For example, the soulful expression of sorrow and loss in the iconic art of Betty Goodwin (an important influence on Burns) derived from personal tragedies in her life, from the death of her father and her son. Similarly, Burns processed his life through his art, a life that was both harrowing and heroic, openly stating “My art originates in autobiographical sources�. On Labour Day weekend of September 1964, a tragic car accident in the New Brunswick village of Blackville resulted in a traumatic spinal cord injury that rendered Burns, age fourteen, quadriplegic, 12
paralyzed from the neck down except for his left hand. Ironically, he had been beaten by nuns at school for favouring his left hand, which they considered a symptom of mental and moral deficiency, a sign of the Devil. The car flipped eight times before landing in a heap of twisted metal, which had to be cut open with the Jaws of Life. Burns would later relive the collision in a haunting vision of glass and blood when his grandmother placed his hand under cool running water. Of the four passengers, the driver was killed instantly, another reportedly sustained permanent brain damage, and another received minor injuries. The grim prognosis for Burns from the neurosurgeon was that he would be housebound and bedridden for the rest of his life, which was predicted to be no more than ten years. Burns spent two years in traction in hospitals in Montreal and Saint John, confined to a full-body sling and a halo brace, a metal ring with pins that screwed into his skull to prevent his neck and head from moving. This life-altering experience was followed by two years of rehabilitation therapy in Fredericton. Bedsores and blood clots and acute withdrawal symptoms from an addiction to painkillers and Valium caused him immense pain and suffering. For someone who had enjoyed considerable physical activity as a boxer and champion figure skater, his world and the way he accessed it had irreversibly vanished.
BODY TRANSPARENT: HOSTAGE
13
FIRESIDE
One would expect Burns to have experienced many dark days of grief and even depression; most assuredly, he would have undergone tremendous psychological adjustment to regain some semblance of independence and sense of purpose. Perhaps he identified with the colt that broke its leg in one of his short stories (Wild Women) and was put down by four women who stuffed its
14
nostrils with cotton strips, tied shut its mouth with rope, and smothered it. He describes the scene: “The colt could make only a few monstrous eye movements as the body dragged on the last of its oxygen. It jerked with spasms, then it became completely still. The women watched in his eyes, as they glazed over, the individual life it held subsided, as a breeze subsides toward evening.�
15
Although Burns had firsthand, hence heightened, awareness of the vulnerability of the human body and of the depth of human mortality, he never played the victim role. Rather, he met the challenge of his disability head on with the assertion “This is the hand I was dealt”. He took full control of his life, focused on what he could do rather than what he could no longer do, and found creative ways not only to survive, but to thrive. His motorized wheelchair gave him the mobility he needed to pursue his goals. For painting and drawing, he equipped his studio with a pulley system, a motorized table that he could rotate, and custom-made sawhorses positioned against the wall to serve as easels. For his sculptural work, he designed the forms and had them fabricated to his precise specifications. Knowing Burns’ life-shattering backstory, his list of accomplishments, not only as a visual artist and teacher, but as a writer, poet, playwright, and even a choreographer, are all the more extraordinary and inspirational. Challenging the traditional notion of disability, he deliberately downplayed his condition. When someone would inquire about it, he would jokingly tell a fantasy story of how he fell off an elephant while on an African safari with his father. He stated, “I always get asked if being in a wheelchair affects my artwork. Of course, it has to affect it … I can’t pretend that I don’t exist in this particular form. I can’t for one minute pretend that I’m not running around in this wheelchair. But I think the issues are much larger than just about me being confined to a wheelchair. I think that is very limiting and I would like the work to have a much broader scope.”
Burns found consolation, impetus and meaning through art, which had been an unrelenting passion since childhood. His earliest work is characterized by conventional modes of representation and a diversity of everyday subject matter: drawings and paintings of landscapes, seascapes, cats, dogs and other animals, and flowers. As he matured and expanded his knowledge of art, he entered an intensive process of personal artistic development where his work became more experimental, more abstract, more expressionistic, and more conceptual. The evolution of his pictorial expression moved towards a strong clarification of purpose, towards a minimization of lines, shapes and colours to maximize their importance, and towards nuanced perspectives on the fragmented and absent body that would come to define his most persistent existential quest as an artist. Burns developed a variety of techniques and processes and investigated materials that would best serve his personal vision. He worked in series, which allowed him to explore his ideas progressively deeper and to create several unified and cohesive bodies of work. Sensitive to the visual particularities of different forms of mark-making that ranged from transparent stains to dripping paint to areas of impasto to smears, smudges, scumbling, and erasures, he was a master at orchestrating space. He activated the blank nothingness of canvas or paper with loose atmospheric fields of colour combined with sparse graphic lines that are sometimes subtle and ethereal and at other times anxious and agitated. A feeling of ephemerality or sense of temporality, of the intangible experience of life, is reinforced by his
use of Mylar film, and also by his incorporation of photo-based imagery, which carries with it a sense of fragmented memories floating in time and space. Burns achieved an evocative, ineffable visual poetry through the suggestive potency of incompleteness, and through the interplay of representation and abstraction and of improvisation and control (one of his series of paintings was a response to the lyricism and spontaneity of jazz music). Displaced fragments of the male body, apparitions of legs, feet, arms, hands, and torsos, emerge from both deliberate and accidental mark- making, inciting reflection on the borders of the body and their instability. Movement is sometimes conveyed, sometimes denied, and there are striking expressions of somatic experience, of blood and projectile vomiting and of wounds that never heal. In some of his graphic work, the body is not visually represented, but its shadow remains powerfully felt, whether in images of rooms, or even in the Dogs Series, a theme readily suggestive of bodily impulses, subconscious instincts, and corporeality. As writing was an integral part of Burns’ creative life, the titles of his work (e.g. Body Transparent: Hostage and Hands that Bailed the Darkness Empty) play an important role for evoking his intent while encouraging the imaginings of viewers. Perhaps Burns’ preoccupation with the absent body is most poignantly expressed in his sculptural works, beginning with his series of boxed assemblages titled Containment, and most emphatically in his later series titled Body Absent, where the body is inferred through psychological associations with the austere formal presence of familiar objects, such as chairs,
18
tables, beds, and sinks. This latter series of hard-edged minimalist metal sculpture suggests threatening bodily constraint and violence, sharing certain affinities with the unnerving sculpture of Mona Hatoum in its subversion of common domestic utilitarian objects. Burns died in 2004 at age 54, (having lived 30 years more than what had been predicted), but his absence is made present through his art and other residual traces of identity that outlive the self, such as memories, thoughts, and texts about him and his work. Although the context in which an artwork is created and the complicity of the artist within that context at the time of its production is intrinsic to our appreciation and understanding of an artist’s practice, works of art hold a certain autonomy with respect to meaning and are subject to multiple interpretations that are dependent on a viewer’s own personal lived experience and life stories to trigger connections with the work. New meanings are often ascribed to artworks with the
passage of time, and the introduction of new contexts extends the arc of the work. In 2020, Burns’ corpus of ghostly bodies has lost none of its relevancy but, in fact, has only deepened and advanced in meaning as we grapple with our bodily existence and heightened sense of mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic and in relation to rapidly changing conceptions and displacements of the body in an ever-evolving technological environment. Where the material world is reduced to digital information and where virtual reality, artificial intelligence, genetic modification, and technological prosthetics are announcing the arrival of a posthuman future of bodiless liberation and immortality in cyberspace, Burns brings us back to the reality of the flesh and spirit of our being. Beyond serving as evidence of the thoughtful and creative mind of a gifted artist, his work reminds us of the universal truth of the fragility and transience of life, and of the inevitability of our own existential exit.
Terry Graff UNTITLED
19
Peter Buckland G A L L ER I S T
I cannot remember the circumstances that led me to Rick Burns, but I can recall the intensity of my reaction to his work and the profound effect Rick and his art had upon me. It was my good fortune to work with Rick, as he and a few others made significant contributions to my seeing the way forward in those early years. Rick, through his words and his work, had much to say concerning the freedom of ideas and materials. This made quite an impression upon me at that time. Rick seemed less interested in the idea of being an artist, more interested in the art of ideas. He was an artist in constant motion, his art propelling itself forward as he sought new ways to express the things he felt must be said. I sensed in his work
an urgency to get on with things that had to be done; it was simply an important part of his ongoing conversation with the process of living. As his dealer, I always anticipated what would come next from Rick, for no series, no exhibition was the same. He had no time for repetition. There was too much to say, and so many ways to say it. Through the years and myriad changes I came to understand how his work was informed by his physical condition, yet in the end it was never about that. His art was about us, for the real constraints that Rick felt were the constraints we all feel. His destruction was our destruction. His creation was our creation. His fire was our fire.
UNTITLED
20
21
FRACTURE
22
I recall clearly my last exhibition with Rick, the series, Becoming Fire (2003). I remember picking up the work from Rick’s studio and asking him for an artist statement, something that might add a bit of clarity to these beautiful and mysterious figures on large white canvases. He asked me to take the paintings, spend a few days with them, then to give him my response. I called him three days later and told him that I was intrigued by these figures, none of which were wholly formed, so that I could not tell whether they were in the process of becoming or in the process of being destroyed. It occurred to me that both were happening at the same time, and that perhaps this was what was happening with each of us every day that we were alive. He paused, then said, “That will do.�
Peter Buckland
23
Ray Cronin CU R ATO R / W R I T ER
Rick Burns lived in the northside Fredericton neighbourhood—Fulton Heights—that I grew up in. And from the mid-1990s until his death, his studio was on Main Street, where one end of Fulton Avenue ended, near the house where my parents lived. I visited that studio regularly for two or three years, as Rick was developing the sculptural work that was eventually included in his exhibition Body Absent at the UNB Art Centre in 1999, as well as newer work that was featured in his posthumous 2006 retrospective exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. I curated both of those exhibitions, and in 2000 I recommended one of those sculptures for purchase by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, as part of a series of works acquired from Atlantic Canadian sculptors. Because while Rick remains best known for his paintings and drawings, I have always felt that it was in his sculpture that he really was finding his voice. As I wrote in the essay for the Beaverbrook show, “the four works in that exhibition [Body Absent] were a distinct departure for Burns, a pivot point that marked a new phase in his development as an artist. It was, quite frankly, his emergence as a sculptor.”
24
25
UNTITLED NO. 6 PRELIMINARY DRAWING FOR THE SCULPTURE FROM THE WHITE ROOM DOWN THE CORRIDOR
FROM THE WHITE ROOM DOWN THE CORRIDOR
26
Rick worked closely with fabricators to have his sculptures made, and then he would refine them in the studio, meticulously working the surfaces, adding and subtracting elements, experimenting with spacing and alignment. Individual elements, under his relentless, restless, inventiveness, would transform again and again. They would be altered by him, or would be sent back to the fabricator with new instructions. He would work them until he found the poetic image he was seeking. Each had to be beautiful and heart-rending at once. In our visits he always wanted to know, “Does it work? Is it sculptural?” He knew materials intimately—despite the fact that he relied on others to make the elements of his sculptures—and he knew how to use the contrast of hard and soft, cold and warm, open and closed, bright and dark, to great effect. The resulting works are haunting, both universal and achingly specific. And yes, they are sculptural. They work.
Ray Cronin 27
Carol Collicutt FR I EN D A N D PEER
28
I met Rick Burns in 1984, at Gallery Connexion when it was just starting. Rick had a studio there and I had mine down the hall from 1987 until the flood of 2008. We hit it off right away, partly because we admired the same artists, both national and international, and partly because we quickly discovered we had the same sense of humour. Connexion became the gathering place for a group of us who were interested in exploration in our practices. There was also a writers’ group that Rick was part of, which met in my studio every Friday afternoon for over a decade.
Humour was so much a part of who Rick was, and why we all loved him so much. Laughter, keen observation, a special take on the everyday – that was him. He could imitate everyone he knew, and I once remarked to one of our friends, “He never imitates me, though!”, and my friend said, “Oh yes, he does, just not when you’re around!” We saw each other almost every day – we’d have lunch together at Connexion, or we’d go to an opening together, and we talked on the phone every night, sometimes on conference calls with other friends. We shared books that we loved, and
FIRETRAP
29
AS IF IT WERE WATER
30
he would read stories he’d been working on. We talked about art incessantly – both of us obsessed with the direction our work would take and the experimental processes that we loved. We checked out each other’s work, we discussed ideas and materials. Such valuable, and precious conversations. I miss them so much. We went to the opening of his show, The Shape of Absence at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, and as we went into the bunker, where the exhibition was back then, I gasped when I saw the giant, vibrantly coloured paintings, (such a departure for him) and Rick looked at me and said, “You missed the sale on red paint,” and then he laughed his infectious chuckle. He could always come up with a line that would crack me up. His sister Cathy and I still share endless memories and comments of Rick’s that make us laugh. Underneath it all is the giant space where he used to be, but because of his wonderful personality, and endless creativity, he has somehow never left.
Carol Collicutt
31
Dana O’Regan M EN T EE A N D FR I EN D
I met Rick when I first got back to Fredericton from Calgary in 2001. I had only been painting a few months when I was told by a friend that he had a studio close by, so I took it upon myself to meet the man who would become one of the most important influences on my career as an artist. From the very first time Rick saw my work he was always encouraging me to paint. I remember Rick saying, “Dana, what I am about to say to you is very positive. Don’t stop painting.” I was a new, self-taught artist. Rick was the first established artist who took the time to give me the tools to look at art objectively and understand what kind of painting I was doing, and what artists I was already intuitively emulating. His insightful critiques
32
33 CAST THE FIRST STONE
THE COMPROMISE
pushed me to be better. He talked to me about art and gave me countless books and magazines to read that were so important to my development. When I was ready, Rick encouraged me to show my work and promote myself as an artist. These are just a few of the things Rick did for me. He was inspiring, supportive, witty, selfless, a caring man who helped me and so many others become better artists. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without him and I’m so grateful to have had him as a mentor and a friend.
Dana O’Regan
35
Silas Robinson I met Rick Burns at the college when I was a student and he felt like a close friend right away. When I saw his work, I was very inspired and realized he was a master of his practice. The combination of tightness and looseness of his linework displayed both his level of skill as well as the deep emotions he must have been feeling while he created his work. I asked him to guide me on my own path as an artist. I had begun nude modeling for the college, so I offered to model for him as well. This worked out great - I was able to get to know him better, and I was able to discuss his work at his studio, while he was in his element. The level of detail he was able to capture in his drawings of me was amazing. He captured my essence. I had never seen this before. As an emerging artist, I was not yet confident in my new work. After completing a number of paintings I felt good about, I would load them up in a taxi van, which was a bit of a task! And I would bring them over to his studio for critique.
36
FIGURE IN MAUVE
M EN T EE A N D FR I EN D
37
His advice was truly insightful. We discussed shapes, colours, and emotions. He was particularly interested in edges, and the transference from one edge to another. His questions and his feedback gave me confidence, and over time I produced enough work to put together a show with Ingrid and Peter Mueller’s Gallery, Art + Concepts. This was an amazing time in my life, and I felt truly connected to my paintings. On one of our last visits together, we actually arranged a trade. I felt blessed. I now proudly hang his work on my wall, and I am forever reminded of his mentorship, and guidance. Rick’s influence had such a strong impact on me, and I am forever grateful for having had the chance to know him.
Silas Robinson
38
WINDOW PAIN
39
40
Harriet Taylor
CO L L E AG U E A N D FR I EN D
UNTITLED
I was a student when I met Rick Burns in the early 1980’s. He had a studio in a relatively new Gallery Connexion, housed at the back of the Justice Building. We met during an opening, and just as he did with so many others, he engaged me in conversation laced with wit and humour, and a gentle positivity that defied his physical boundaries. Our friendship developed from that point and lasted several decades, through many ups and downs, and I loved him very much indeed. 41
In latter years, he taught with me in the Surface Design Studio. As he passed through the halls on his way to class, he always had a joke for those who crossed his path. He was delighted when Joe Arbeau mounted a mirror in the elevator, not for vanity’s sake (although he did have a mass of unruly curls), but for ease of entry and exit. A mirror might have come in handy the time we were in a shop one Christmas and, somehow, he had caught a fur collar under the tire of his electric wheelchair. He looked at me, and in a stage whisper said, “Oh my God, Harriet, roadkill.” He slowly backed off the prey and I gingerly set it on the shelf, no one the wiser for our mishap. Silent until we exited the shop, we burst into gales of laughter. There were many such moments, so much fun. Rick was a wonderful artist, a great teacher, and an unforgettable friend. I have missed his nightly phone calls that would end with a quirky little saying like, “Well, I must trundle off to sleepy hollow…” Trundle off he did, but his photo sits on a high perch in my studio, and he never feels too far away.
Harriet Taylor
42
UNTITLED
43
“After spending five minutes with Rick, the wheelchair disappeared.” C ATH Y BURNS LYONS
44
45
Contributor Bios Terry Graff WRITER AND CUR ATOR Terry Graff has a multifaceted background in the visual arts as a nationally recognized visual artist, art writer, curator and art educator who has served as director of four public art galleries in Canada: Beaverbrook Art Gallery (New Brunswick), Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatchewan), Rodman Hall Arts Centre (Ontario), and Confederation Centre Art Gallery (P.E.I.). The recipient of major commissions, acquisitions, grants, and awards, his distinctive art has been presented regionally, nationally, and internationally, and includes mixed media drawings, paintings, collages, assemblages, sculpture, kinetic works, and multi-media installations. He has curated over 200 exhibitions and written numerous articles, catalogues, and books on a diverse range of contemporary and historical artists and art subjects.
46
Peter Buckland GALLERIST Peter Buckland is a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) for his work in the arts and when he retired in 2017 was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at The Originals. During his career he represented contemporary Canadian artists in 3 galleries (Windrush Galleries, Peter Buckland Gallery, and Buckland Merrifield Gallery), curating over 250 exhibitions promoting New Brunswick artists. A co-founder of the Saint John Gallery Hops, and co-founder of the Saint John Community Arts Board, he also co-authored Portraits: New Brunswick Painters, was the chair of Saint John’s Cultural Capital of Canada Committee, Chair of The Originals and Vice-Chair of Sculpture Saint John.
47
Carol Collicutt
Ray Cronin
FRIEND AND PEER
CUR ATOR / WRITER
Carol Collicutt has been a professional visual artist for the past 40 years. She is a former president of Gallery Connexion in Fredericton, where she maintained a studio for decades, and where her close friendship with Rick Burns developed. She is currently Chair of the New Brunswick Arts Board, and is active on many committees and think tanks related to the arts.
Ray Cronin is a Nova Scotia-based writer, curator, and editor. He is the founding curator of the Sobey Art Award and former Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. He is the author of nine books, including Maud Lewis: Creating an Icon (2020, Gaspereau Press) and Mary Pratt: Life & Work (2020, Arts Canada Institute).
48
Silas Robinson MENTEE AND FRIEND Silas Robinson is an established artist, loving husband and father. A creative entrepreneur with over ten years of business experience in the health and fitness industry, he is currently dedicated to the study of spirituality and enlightenment and plans to use this knowledge to coach others.
Dana O’Regan MENTEE AND FRIEND Dana O’Regan is a self-taught abstract artist. Originally from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Dana now lives with his partner in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
49
Harriet Taylor COLLE AGUE AND FRIEND
50
Harriet Taylor enjoyed a long and fulfilling career at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. For many years, she was the Studio Head of Surface Design, and spent the last four years as Academic Dean. Harriet is a Fellow of the college.
Kâté Braydon
Karen Ruet
WRITER AND PHOTOGR APHER
INSTRUC TOR AND COORDINATOR
Kâté Braydon graduated from the College of Craft and Design with a diploma in Photography. She worked as a news photographer for several years, both in her home province of New Brunswick and in Ontario. Kâté now works for a marketing agency in Saint John, where she writes, makes pictures and video.
Karen Ruet is the Coordinator at the George Fry Gallery at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and an instructor, primarily in the Photography studio. She is a founding member of the photography collective SilverFish: a winner of the inaugural Fredericton Arts Achievement Award (2017), and has worked as a photographer, arts writer, and curator. Her work can be found in many private collections and in the permanent collection of the University of New Brunswick.
51
Exhibition History S O LO 2014
The Poetry of Existence, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
2007
A Fine Presence, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB, concurrent with an exhibition of work at Ingrid Mueller, Art + Concepts, Fredericton, NB
2007
For the Collection: Strathbutler Award Winners 1996-2000, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB
2006
Rick Burns: Between Presence and Absence/Entre Présence et Absence, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
2004
Rick Burns: New Works, Ingrid and Peter Mueller Art + Concepts, Fredericton, NB
2003
Becoming Fire, New Works on Canvas by Rick Burns, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
1999
Rick Burns: Body Absent, UNB Art Centre, Fredericton, NB
1998
Body Transparent, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
1996
Stations, ABEC, Saint John, NB
1992
The Shape of Absence, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
The Thorton Interiors, Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton
1991
The Outline of Loss, UNB Art Centre, Fredericton, NB
1990
Access, Centennial Building, Fredericton, NB
1989
Collaborations, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
1986
Arcos, The Harriet Irving Library, UNB Fredericton
Night Jazz, Musée de Madawaska, Edmundston, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
52
1984
Installation, National Exhibition Centre, Fredericton, NB
Thirty Days/Trente Jours, Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, NB
Eight Paintings, Spanish Lounge, UNB Fredericton
1983
Tortuga, Inform Gallery, Saint John, NB
Recent Work, Fine Line Gallery, Fredericton, NB
Selected Works, Spanish Lounge, UNB Fredericton
Achromatic Series, Rothman’s Gallery, Moncton, NB
1982
Achromatic Series, Windrush Gallery, Saint John, NB
Ten New Works, Cassel Gallery, Fredericton
Containment, Canadian Consulate, Boston, USA
1981
Containment, Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton, NB; Link Gallery, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB; Cassel Gallery, Fredericton, NB
Paper Works, Explorations Gallery, National Exhibition Centre, Fredericton, NB
1980
Responses, Landmark Gallery, Fredericton, NB
GROUP 2013
Art Treasures of New Brunswick, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
Suzanne Hill: A Conversation with Rick Burns, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
2012
Suzanne Hill: A Conversation with Rick Burns, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
2010
'Regard ... Strathbutler 20 Years/Ans', New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB 53
2009
Portraits: New Brunswick Painters, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB
2008
The Clearing House, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
2007
Strathbutler Award Winners, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB
Toronto International Art Fair, Ingrid Mueller Art + Concepts, Toronto, On 2002
Caught in the Presence of Dreams/ Pris en Flagrant délit des reves. Launch of national touring exhibition of Strathbutler Winners from 1996-2000, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB, Acadia University Art Gallery, Wolfville, NS, Galerie Colline, l’Université de Moncton, Edmundston, NB, Kings Landing Historical Settlement, Kings Landing, NB, Masterworks Gallery, Hamilton, Bermuda, Andrew and Laura McCain Gallery, Florenceville, NB, Rodman Hall, St. Catherines, ON, The Station Gallery, Whitby, ON, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
1999
Dialogue Among Cultures, itinerant show
The Nude, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
Geography 101, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
1998
In Passing/En Passant: Gerard Beaulieu, Rick Burns, Suzanne Gautier, Susan Wood. Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, NS (with catalogue)
1998
Small Works, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
In Passing/En Passant, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, NS
Inaugural Exhibit, Critical Mass: The Gallery, Fredericton, NB
Take a Look: Acquisitions 1996-1998, UNB Art Centre, Fredericton, NB
1997
Inaugural Exhibit, Peter Buckland Gallery, Saint John, NB
1994
Summer Group Show, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
The Salon, Sue Lawrence Gallery, Fredericton, NB
Middlemarch, Literary Press Group, Toronto, On
54
1993
The Exquisite Corpse, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
1992
Summer Group Show, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
Kicking Against the Pricks, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
1991
Connexion 5 Years After, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, PEI, UNB Art Centre, Fredericton, NB
1990
Boxes/Boites, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
Summer Show, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
1989
D’Art et d’argent, Aberdeen School, Fredericton, NB
Notions of the River, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
Connexion 5 Years After, Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton, Moncton, NB
1988
Bill C-54 Show, Gallery Connexion
1987
Dog Daze, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
Against the Wall, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
Forum ’87, Centre Communautaire Sainte-Anne, Fredericton, NB
Group Show, National Exhibition Centre, Fredericton, NB
Miniature Show, Del Bello Gallery, Toronto, On
1986
Celebration ’86, Windrush Gallery
Group Show, Wing Gallery, Theatre New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB
Tyrannizing Image, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
August View, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
1985
Black Paintings, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB
Bi-Buy, UNB Art Centre, Fredericton, NB 55
1984
New Brunswick Juried Exhibition, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
3D-NB-200, Galerie Restigouche, Campbellton, NB
24 Paintings by 24 Artists, Windrush Gallery
1983
Moncton Christmas Exhibit, Rothman’s Gallery
Ghost Dance, University of Maine, Farmington, ME
Black and White, Fine Line Gallery, Fredericton, NB
1982
Canada Council Art Bank Rental Exhibition, UNB Fredericton
CARFAC Art Auction, National Exhibition Centre, Fredericton, NB
1979
Maritime Art Association, Eptek centre, PEI
Exchange, New Brunswick Cultural Development, Yukon Territories
AWA R D S 2003
Creation/Production Grant, Canada Council for the Arts (25,000.)
2000
Creation/Production Grant, Canada Council for the Arts (15, 000.)
2000
Strathbutler Award, Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, Saint John, NB (10,000.)
2000
Creation Grant, New Brunswick Arts Board
1999
Creation Grant, New Brunswick Department of Municipalities, Culture and Housing
1997
Creation Grant, New Brunswick Department of Municipalities, Culture and Housing
1996
Solo Exhibition, New Brunswick Department of Municipalities, Culture and Housing
1993
Creation Grant, New Brunswick Department of Municipalities, Culture and Housing
56
1992
NB Cooperation Agreement on Cultural Development, Member of Task Force
1991
Creation Grant, New Brunswick Department of Municipalities, Culture and Housing
1986
New Brunswick Cultural Development Branch Grant
1983
New Brunswick Cultural Development Branch Grant
1982
Materials Grant, Fredericton Rotary Club
1981
New Brunswick Cultural Development Branch Grant
1980
Materials Grant, Fredericton Foundation
S E L EC T E D P U B L I C CO L L EC T I O N S Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Bank of Montreal, Fredericton, NB Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB Canada Council Art Bank Centre Communautaire Sainte-Anne, Fredericton, NB Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton New Brunswick Art Bank New Brunswick Museum University of New Brunswick
57
List of Works There were some gaps in our ability to fully access the artist’s archive, hence some works that are listed as Untitled may have been titled and dated by the artist at the time of creation. 1. The Compromise, acrylic on canvas, 60” x 54”, circa 1992 2. Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 60” x 54”, circa 1992 3. Cast the First Stone, from Becoming Fire, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48”, 2003 4. Suspended Time, from Becoming Fire mixed media on canvas, 48 x 48”, 2003 5. The New Language, from Becoming Fire mixed media on canvas 48 x 48”, 2003 6. Draped Figure, mixed media on Translar, 40” x 50”, date unknown 7. Blind, Mixed Media on Translar, 40” x 50”, date unknown 8. Prone, from Body Transparent, mixed media on mylar, 44” x 34”, 1998 9. Suspended Figure II, mixed media on Mylar, 34” x 44”, date unknown 10. Fire, 44” x 34”, 1998 11. Untitled, Dog Series, Mixed media on Mylar, 29” x 29”, 2003 12. Untitled, Body Transparent, mixed media on Mylar, 44” x 34”, 1998 13. Untitled #1, graphite and mixed media on Mylar (small feet), 29.5” x 33.5”, date unknown 14. Untitled, graphite on Mylar (dangling feet and pipe, and bowl), 29.5” x 33.5”, date unknown 15. Captive, mixed media on canvas, 26” x 38”, Collection of Sheila Weeks, date unknown 16. Fracture, mixed media on canvas, 26” x 38”, date unknown 58
17. Untitled, Body Transparent, mixed media on Mylar, 44” x 34”, 1998 18. Olympia II, mixed media on Mylar, 26” x 38”, date unknown 19. Untitled No. 6, preliminary drawing for the sculpture From the White Room Down the Corridor, mixed media on mylar 23” x 28”, circa 1999 20. Untitled No. 5 (metal box), preliminary drawing for sculpture, mixed media on Mylar, 23” x 28”, circa 1999 21. Untitled No. 7, preliminary drawing for sculpture, mixed media on Mylar 23” x 28”, circa 1999 22. Figure in Mauve, mixed media on canvas, 60” x 54”, date unknown 23. Hands that Bailed the Darkness Empty, from Becoming Fire, mixed media on canvas, 48” x 48”, 2003 24. Fireside, mixed media on Mylar, 60” x 24”, 2004 25. Firetrap, mixed media on Mylar, 60” x 24”, 2004 26. Hostage, from Body Transparent, mixed media on Mylar, 44” x 34”, 1998 27. Untitled, mixed media on Mylar (pinks and oranges, figurative), 34” x 30”, date unknown 28. Untitled gesture, graphite and mixed media on Mylar, 30” x 34”, date unknown 29. Untitled gesture 2, graphite and mixed media on Mylar, 30” x 34”, date unknown 30. Untitled, mixed media on Translar (two figures), 34” x 43”, date unknown 31. Untitled, mixed media on Mylar (partial figure), 24” x 26”, date unknown 32. An Old Event, mixed media on Mylar, 4” x 4”, 1999, Collection of Janice Wright-Cheney 33. As if It Were Water, mixed media on Mylar, 17” x 22” 1999. Collection of Karen Ruet 34. Trough, welded steel, H:18” x Wi: 119.3” x D: 7.75”, 2000. Beaverbrook Art Gallery Collection. 2007.12 35. Window Pain, mixed media on Mylar, 30” x 34”, date unknown 59
60
“Rick’s magnetic personality, unfailing optimism and wonderful sense of humour drew friends and students to him in great numbers. Art was his life and he talked about it with everyone. The public knows Rick through the substantial body of work he left behind. Colleagues and friends remember his wit and warmth. Our memories of him are so vivid, the anecdotes about him so funny, his presence so indelible, his loss so unbelievable that, perhaps, in a sense, he will always be with us.” NE W BRUNS WICK AR T S BOAR D, ANNUAL REP OR T 20 0 4 -20 0 5
62