Artist Spotlight - Harry Burleigh — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Biography

Harry T. Burleigh was initially inspired to sketch as a youngster when he saw the uniqueness in the designs on record album covers. Several years later, he attended his first art class as a junior in high school, where his teacher saw that he had a developing talent and encouraged him keep sharpening his skills. Many of these skills he surfaced in the margins of his notebooks during chemistry class.

Genie And The Serpent, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 121.92

From his youth, he had always believed that art could be produced from any idea or medium. Years would pass however, before he would feel that he had actually proven this to anyone. He became bored with representational art and the seemingly dull titles that accompanied so many of these images.

Eclosia, 2024, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 121.92

At the age of eighteen, Harry was accepted into the art program at West Virginia University. His philosophy at this time, was that it was wise to keep a pool of artistic influences, however foolish to compromise his own creative integrity in order to please the faculty.

Primal Enlightenment, 2024, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 121.92

Burleigh was constantly drawn to artists who's works involved beauty, strangeness, or emotion. While he did pay close attention to some of the greats, he often wondered why others had become so overrated. He also disagreed with the theory, that everything one might create has already been created in the past.

Samba Solitaire, 2010, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 121.92

Not so with surrealism he thought. Not so with abstracts, and while he wasn't intending to elicit a specific response from onlookers, he always had their subconscious impressions in the cross hairs. He later received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art.

The Beach Towel, 2024, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 121.92

After spending a year as a commercial artist for a local television station, Burleigh decided to stop doing art for others and to just do it for himself. This lead to an extended career in video production, where he found himself writing, producing, and directing. He would continue to do art on the side, but he never showed it to anyone for two decades.

Taunting The Ringmaster, 2006, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 121.92

In a twist of fate, while editing one day, Harry stumbled upon a new way to digitally combine imagery in a way that he had never seen done before. He later tried the technique with a few of his old artistic works and found that it truly had merit.

Women And Children First, 2024, Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 91.44

Harry Burleigh's artwork has now been in the public eye since 2006. His immediate plans are to expand his body of work while refining some of his discovered techniques. In the end his intentions are to share his ideas openly so that other artists may benefit from and possibly improve upon them in the future.

Sui Generis Orenda, 2006, Oil on canvas, 91.44 x 121.92

Artist Statement

My passion for art has always revolved around beauty, not just in people and places, but also in shapes and colors. With my technical approach to painting, not being certain of the results yet still being driven to produce them is what makes the effort of creation so captivating. This, combined with innate pareidolia, by which I continuously see faces and figures in random surfaces, allows me to pull these images forward, seemingly from nothing, and present

DMT Launch Pad, 2024, Mixed Media, 60.96 x 91.44

them, however subtly to the observer. An important conversation needs to occur between the viewer and my art, one that doesn't involve me, and is silent and discreet. If my work speaks to the viewer first, then the dialogue is afoot.

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