Caroline Burdett

BIO

I decidedly made room for a professional art career in 2019 when I stopped working in hospice & palliative care. My work aims to capture the emotional undertones of experience with abstract works. I also work part time as a psychotherapist, experimenting with novel treatment approaches like psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, in the Hudson Valley, New York.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I make color-rich paintings of experience, sense, and feeling, with form acting as a jumping off point for play. Images may include a scene or figure as their foundational form. From there, I deviate into the subjective through moody linework and evocative, unconventional color. My keen interests in science, philosophy, and spirituality filter through the brush and into my work, becoming observable entities that I can interact with. I break up my painting sessions with movement, which can be observed in my instagram stories I post of myself dancing in my studio.

Interview with Caroline Burdett

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences?

I have loved art, music, and dancing since very early in life. I went to an arts preschool where I began with dance and the arts and was just in my element. I wanted to be a dancer for the first 15 years of my life and was pretty dedicated to it. I became dedicated to visual art when I was 16, living in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. I struggled with a number of difficulties in my teenage years and was dropped off there for a little under a year. I dropped out of the public high school I was in at the time and moved to San Miguel where I learned spanish and studied figure painting. I painted from a live model for the first time and it was wonderful. We were in this open-air studio in the desert, painting with oil, smoking sweet rice paper filterless cigarettes that cost about 50 cents a pack. Many of us had our own personal french press on our side tables, along with our palettes, paints, mediums, and some makeshift ashtray. It sounds like the 60’s but this was 1999. I didn’t know any better so I painted with oil on a large piece of flimsy paper–I think it might have even been newsprint paper! And I remember my first figure painting so well, even though it is long lost and almost certainly disintegrated. I chose to paint the full-figured female model in tones of hot pink, the drapery in bright golden yellows, the platform in different values of cerulean blue, and the background in a sort of emerald green. From my first painting, color was bold and non-ordinary. It never even occurred to me to paint the colors as they actually appeared. I think I figured, “where’s the fun in that?”. After Mexico I returned to Chicago where I auditioned at The Chicago Academy for the Arts and was accepted. I studied visual art there and made up for some missing high school credits and eventually got a high school diploma, though a bit later than my peers because of that year in Mexico living as an artist.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

I am primarily based in the Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountain region of New York, about two hours north of NYC. I spend time in LA as well. I came to the east coast from LA for an artist residency in Woodstock, NY in early 2021 and started dating my now husband, who lived nearby. The Hudson Valley is full of interesting and creative folks and there is so much art here. I think a lot of NYC moved up here during the pandemic and left a big stamp on top of the already rich soil left here from past generations of artists. The Catskill mountain scenery and the Ashokan Reservoir both make tons of appearances in my work. The land here is magical.

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you?

I’ve never had a single studio for more than a year. I like to be inspired by a place but am always searching for a better setup. Wherever my studio is, you will certainly find me dancing in it. I like to move around and dance when I paint and I sometimes record myself and put studio dancing videos in my IG stories for fun. I’m not a professional dancer by any means, but I share my silly dancing videos to remind myself and others to be silly and free and expressive and not care what other people think.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

A typical day…it depends where I am. If at home in NY, mornings can include meditation and breathwork with my partner before we start our workdays. Weekdays include providing a session of psychotherapy (I’m a therapist too). I usually hold sessions virtually from my home office. I also take part in various groups and community programs. For instance, right now I’m part of a crit group that meets weekly and is run via the NYC Crit Club. Then I paint until the evening unless I’m building stretcher frames, or building art shipping boxes, or doing art admin work–which there is so much of! What I would give for a studio assistant!

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Is there anything that interrupts your creative energy?

Everything. I am usually in the mood to paint and the act of painting gives me a sense of being productive and being engaged in action while at the same time shutting a part of my brain off so that I can be in a meditative state. It’s my favorite thing. I do a ton of spiritual and personal development work but if I get too far away from those practices then my creative energy can get wonky, usually because I start taking everything too seriously. Seriosity is a killer. When I am at my best, I’m much too playful to take anything too seriously; in life and in painting. Dancing helps me keep things breezy too.

How do you maintain momentum in your practice?

I think it’s good for me to have multiple paintings in the works at the same time. That way, if one painting requires some pause then I can just work on another. It allows me to keep moving and not take any one work too seriously.

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method?

I’m getting more and more interested in painting on unprimed canvas and linen. Historically I have needed to be frugal when shopping for supplies, and quality art materials are very expensive. So for a long time I defaulted to primed canvas as a surface. Now I’m beginning to challenge that scarcity mentality through taking risks with more costly materials like linen and larger stretchers. As far as pigments, I love working with acrylics and oils. I also like to use paint markers and paint sticks. I also like to play with dye.

Can you walk us through your overall process in making your current work? Does drawing play a role in your process?

It depends on the piece but usually there is drawing involved in the beginning. I like to create underpaintings and then draw on top of them. Sometimes the underpaintings are a solid tone but usually they are a work in themselves where I’m really expressing something without paying any attention whatsoever to the final result (because it will be painted over). The psychic material that comes out in the underpainting often informs the final product. Some paintings take a day, others take months.

What is exciting about your process currently?

Creating varying textures. I’m thinking about texture a lot right now. How pigment operates on top of a hard surface or how it can seep into a surface, like dye, and what those differences feel like. I love tones interacting in all sorts of ways. How two colors mixed together before being applied to a surface creates a different experience than the same two low-opacity colors layered on top of each other separately, coexisting in some other types of dimension. I am so interested in color and light and the mechanics of it all; particles and waves. Art, science, spirituality– their interconnectedness excites me.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I think I’m too curious to dedicate myself to one style or theme. I was making mostly figure paintings in the start of 2020, along with some very abstract works that were really about color relationships. I travel a lot and my work style and process can shift with that. In Spring 2021, I was in Asheville, NC and Nashville, TN and I was making psychic landscapes almost exclusively. I spent the next summer at a residency in Woodstock, NY and I became obsessed with quantum physics, mico life, and non-ordinary states of consciousness and my work became very geometric and pattern-oriented. I moved again and the seasons changed and I went back into the landscapes. I did an interiors series this past December. I’ll be hitting weekly figure drawing sessions this Spring so we’ll see what comes of that.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

I am also a psychotherapist. Again, I’m hugely dedicated to personal development, probably above all else. So the themes and lessons that come alive in my life at any given time tend to weave into my therapy practice and my paintings. I try to stay open and awake to it all.

Have you had any epiphanies recently that have changed the course of your work or caused you to shift directions?

I recently painted on raw linen and I am planning to explore it more. I liked it a lot.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I like philosophy and science that blurs the lines between science and what is typically considered unscientific, like spirituality. Like when Albert Einstein said

“Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” I like Transcendentalist writers, like Emerson. Recently I’ve been listening to the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust a lot, Weyes Blood, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, The Smile. I read Breath by James Nestor this year and that felt important. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron is an important read as well. I tend to gravitate toward non-fiction works at the intersection of science and spirituality.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

Per Adolfsen, Raffael Bader, Anne-Sophie Tschiegg, Jiri Hauschka, Sarah faux. I would like to go to more shows and I make sure to hit museums and galleries when I’m in NYC or LA, but I live in the mountains!

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Play, have fun, be kind, and don’t take life too seriously.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?Anything else you would like to share?

I’m excited about working large and plan to push myself on that front more in the next year. I have a piece in a group show opening in April at a local gallery and am making more time to apply to open calls. I’m working on a new series that explores different textures within a painting and what that can evoke.

To find out more about Caroline Burdett check out her Instagram and website.