Brendan Burns

My work, both past and present, is underpinned by the central themes of absence, isolation, mortality and the spiritual. It is the balance between paint, process and subject matter that has maintained my visual language and its development through what on the surface may seem to have been differing themes. I am grappling with the concept of hæcceity, inscape, thing-ness, essence and the ontological in the way I see a stone, rock-pool or lichen growth. The challenge is then using paint and charcoal to communicate this experience to the viewer as well as incorporating my own refractions of self, identity and awareness of mortality and the spiritual.

Returning to Pembrokeshire regularly presents the dilemma, 'Which beach to visit?' It is the catalyst to continue asking questions through paint. It is, 'the breath' that my work references again and again. 'To feel breath, the wind and space. To be human in the primeval wind, to taste the wind, to shiver. To breathe in memory, thought, serenity, time and contemplation.' When I ask myself once again what is the point of painting? What do my paintings do? I see that the point is quite simply to create a painting which 'allows thought itself to breathe.'

Brendan Stuart Burns was born in 1963; he currently lives and works between Cardiff and St Davids, Pembrokeshire, Wales. He studied Fine Art at Cardiff College of Art (1981–1985), and undertook a postgraduate in painting at The Slade School of Art, University College London (1985–1987). He won the Gold Medal in Fine Art at The National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1993 and 1998, and Welsh Artist of the Year in 2000 and 2003. 

Burns has exhibited both nationally and internationally. His work is held in numerous private and public collections. He is represented by  Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, Artis Gallery, New Zealand, and Caldwell Snyder Gallery, California, where he has an upcoming exhibition in January 2027.