Exhibit features work from artist’s travels
What you see is what you get, but you also get a lot more, in an exhibit by Greg Burns at [Artspace] at Untitled, 1 NE 3.
In addition to realistically detailed studies of Oklahoma buildings, you get brilliant lighting and works based on his travels out of state.
The show of about 80 ink-and-watercolor works by Burns opened Dec. 6 and ends with a closing reception 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Jan. 17.
Burns has coped with a muscle and joint disorder since infancy by working with an ink ball cradled in one hand, and holding the brush in his teeth.
Delicate, dazzling, dancing shadows of leaves on a tree-lined path lead us to the fountains of an “Arboretum” in one work.
The “Fechin Studio” seems still in use, as if the artist just stepped out, while a rough wooden bridge offers us easy access to the “Taos Pueblo.”
A “Grand Arch” in a Utah park is almost ethereal, and sun floods the foreground in front of a corral and log cabin at New Mexico’s “Ghost Ranch.”
The front of a several story building is cut away, like a doll’s house, drawing us into a literal “Slice of Life” in his work of that title.
A T-rex type dinosaur crosses the road in front of a driver on “A Road Trip
to Guymon,” but is humorously left out of the title.
Another work has a Pop Art feel, capturing the proliferation of roadside signage and vintage cars at a Florida “Alligator Farm.”
The bodies of golden bison grazing on silvery grass are only sketched in, making them appear to be part of “Buffalo Clouds” overhead.
A road of “Yellow Bricks” is more realistically handled than the one in “The Wizard of Oz,” yet seems to lead to adventure.
In similar fashion, a narrow cobbled street or alley succeeds in evoking “Italian Dreams” of travel. The show is highly recommended.