Harrison Burns’ artist statement:

“I loose the literal television image through the process from slide to stencil to canvas. The time lapse helps. By the time I put the stencil on the canvas I no longer remember its origin. I am only with color. It is becoming a painting not a reproduction of a television image.

Horror, science fiction and political images continue to enthrall me. It’s the exaggeration that impels me, I think. A certain but general paranoia is involved as well as darkness. It is a darkness and mystery that we locate in Goya’s last works. How exciting “to see a giant spider on the side of a skyscraper”. For example, it is surrealistic. Could this also be a symbol of Red China, Russia, Communism, Nixon, conservative right wingers, etc – deep-seeded fears or is it even more cosmic.

I want to “draw-out” a universality from the images I choose to paint. Is there a television iconography?

The television image, as a basis, gives me a greater range in which to wander and explore. It is non-inhibitive in terms of color, form, light and space. I resist anything that predicates any other system.

I often feel the magic in the television image. I find in it a peculiar and mystical quality.

The television image has an inherent universality.

Through the manner in which I paint, there is a certain distance to color. With this distance I have more control with color and therefore, at times, achieve brilliant color relationships. I revel in color. Using color is a celebration.

I continually return to grays. I have a keen sensitivity to tonality. This, I’m sure, is because of my color confusions (the red/green spectrum). Although this problem rarely impairs my color use. Using grays, though, seems to “ground” my forms – this is good – like building a foundation, a basis.

I often remember Goya’s Horror of War series. My painting “Executions in Iran” is my homage to Goya’s “5th of May” painting. It is just updated and in my style. Horror images in some strange, exaggerated and abstracted manner mirror the good and evil in man. What is monstrous?

I enjoy taking an image, such as my “Piédad” and do, systematically, a distinctly different painting of the same image with every range of gray, blue, yellow, red, green, purple and orange. Then I take each a step further by blurring, splitting, fragmenting and abstracting the image. Somehow finishing the series making collages with the very materials that made the paintings creates a finality, a cycle.”