Contemporary painter Steve Burnham turned to the genre of portraiture several years ago. This new body of work addresses art history while carrying contemporary references about uncertainty, contingency, and process.

 

Burnham earned his BA and MA in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by a BFA in painting and drawing from UW-Milwaukee and an MFA from the University of Kansas. Both fields of study, literature and fine arts,  inform his work with words, puns and wordplay integral to the interplay of image and title.

 

Steadily moving away from his earlier style of illustrative clarity that focused on environmental issues, Burnham has embraced a more intuitive and painterly approach that encourages chance and accepts accidents, making use of techniques including collage, mosaic, recycling, subtraction.