Diane Burko: Water Matters

W I T H C ATA L O G U E E S S AY B Y C A R T E R R AT C L I F F

DianeBurko WATER MATTERS

DianeBurko W AT E R M AT T E R S JUNE 8 - JULY 15. 2012

LewAllenGalleries Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com cover: Godafoss 6, 2004, oil on canvas, 60” x 96”

Diane Burko: Water Matters

Yet the tension between her static medium and her restless motifs generates a dramatic force, and this is what charges the painting with its temporal immediacy. When she turns to calmer subjects that sense of the present moment persists, giving us an intuitive feel for the ceaseless energies that shape the world reflected in her art.

Water flows and so do meanings, meaning that the title of this exhibition—“Water Matters”—displays a certain fluidity. On first reading, it states something indisputable: if we matter, then so does water. Not only is it crucial to our survival but in a certain sense it is us, given that H2O is the largest ingredient in our physical makeup. Representing environments widely dispersed across the globe—the water planet, as we sometimes call it—the paintings in this exhibition draw us into an intense contemplation of this crucial truth about ourselves. Yet there is another, more oblique way to understand the title, not as a statement but as name for a pressing concern—as in “personal matters” or “matters of state.” In this sense of the phrase, Burko treats water matters as both personal and political.

In 1993 Burko was invited to stay at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como, in northern Italy. Lago di Casa Rosa, 1994, belongs to the series of paintings inspired by this visit—as does Bellagio Revisited, which the artist painted in 1995 from photographs she took from the balcony of her room at the Center. From the start, Burko has anchored her images in photographic accuracy. With the facts established, she reimagines them in the course of creating an image on canvas. As the Bellagio series progressed, it evolved into the celebration of the subtle, pervasive unity that suffuses cloud, mountain, and water with radiance. A cool gray light slowly surges through the landscape, reconciling the differences between rock and mist and reflective water. And we begin to feel in these paintings a unity of another kind, as the weather becomes a metaphor for the artist’s emotional state.

Among the artist’s earliest works are views of the Grand Canyon, not of the river that runs along its bed but of its streaked and stony walls. In these paintings from the late 1970s, the air is clear and spatial immensities are measured off by sharply delineated forms. She is picturing in minute detail the static skeleton of the earth. And when water appeared in her art, it too was static, at least on the surface—as in pencil renderings of a reservoir in the forests of Pennsylvania. Then, in the mid-1980s, she took a trip to California and traveled up the coastal highway to Big Sur, where the rocky cliffs give way, precipitously, to the waters of the Pacific. It was here that Burko found the subject of the earliest painting in this exhibition, Into the Pacific 1, 1985-86.

Or it’s the other way around: her personal weather establishes the prevailing climate in the world she transforms into art. The metaphor runs both ways, as an effective metaphor always does, creating the reciprocity—the interchange between world and self—that gives art meanings that are often too large to pin down. We grasp them, nonetheless, by a kind of osmosis, sensing that Burko is dealing with important matters: water matters, which include our relationship to landscapes sustained, as we are, by this essential substance.

For her views of the Grand Canyon, the artist went up in plane. At the western edge of the North American continent, she needed only to look down to find her subject: an ocean confronting the craggy land and stirring itself into a luminous froth. Recording a moment in this endless process, Into the Pacific 1 shows time infiltrating Burko’s art. Until now, her imagery had a look of stillness. Her skies and landscapes seemed as motionless as her canvases and sheets of paper. Big Sur persuaded Burko to embrace the subject of ceaseless motion. See Into the Pacific 1 as enclosed by its edges and it has the impact of a fully realized, self-sufficient composition. In a word, it is beautiful.

The artist lives and works in Philadelphia, not far from the Schuylkill River. Visiting the overgrown glens of the Wissahickon, a tributary of the Schuylkill, she was reminded of landscapes she encountered in France. Petit Creuse, Wissahickon, 1995, is one of five paintings that pay tribute to the lush green quietude

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her second trip, the artist flew over vast swathes of the island landscape, on the lookout for active craters. To her surprise, she was drawn more powerfully to Iceland’s spectacular waterfalls.

This response led to the “foss” paintings of 2002-2004. (The word means “waterfall” in Icelandic.) In Burko’s earlier images of water, the element is either still or in motion. Here it is both.

But how could that be?

of the temperate zone here and in Europe and, by implication, around the world. These canvases led to the commission of Wissahickon Reflections, a suite of three mural-size paintings (the largest is seven feet high by ninety-seven feet long) that took over two years to complete. In the course of this project, Burko acquired deep knowledge of a vast subject. When it was over, she felt the need to “debrief” herself, a process that led her to paint Wissahickon Reflections 1-5, 1998.

What I’m getting at is the way that in Godafoss 6, 2004, for example, the foamy cataracts are as monumental and solidseeming as the rocky cliffs over which they plunge. Burko shows us landscapes built from stark alternations of light and dark— or, in the case of Aldeyjarfoss 2, 2004, the contrast between a column of white water and surrounding walls of black basalt. In their way, the “foss” paintings are as still those in the Bellagio series. Yet we know that waterfalls roar, and of course they are constantly flowing. By focusing so vividly on what remains constant—the shapes of these foamy currents—she achieves a unity of motion and stillness that complements the other unities we have seen or felt in her art. Attending to particulars, Burko harmonizes great disparities, even opposites. Of these resolutions, the one that joins the artist’s self to her subject is the most far-reaching, for it points to all that connects us to the world and makes water matters so urgent. It is here that we feel the force of Burko’s politics, though she is not a political artist in the familiar manner.

With these small canvases, she returned at an intimate scale to images of clouds and leaves and branches on the still surface of the river. These reflections in water are also reflections on water: on its beauty and what we might call its vulnerability, symbolized by the fragile forms and colors mirrored on its surface. A decade later, Burko returned to the sunlit woods, this time on the banks of Geddes Run Creek, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. By then, she had developed a close acquaintance with landscapes of a different sort. After finishing her Wissahickon paintings, Burko traveled to Costa Rica. In the midst of a rain forest, she looked around and realized that she felt, for the time being, tired of green. When she asked what else Costa Rica had to offer, she was taken to a volcano. Then another and another.

That was in 1998. Within four years, she had made the acquaintance of volcanoes in Alaska, Hawaii, Sicily, the mainland of Italy, and Iceland. From these trips came paintings of hot lava: stone flowing with the fluidity of water. Of course lava demands a range of colors different from the ones we see in Burko’s water paintings, and yet her brushwork remains the same: deft, elegant, and endlessly responsive to the nuances of her subject. Her art helps us intuit the underlying unity of the ancient elements, not only fire and water but also earth and air.

I mention this four-part cosmology to suggest that her imagery is suffused with a quality of myth. Yet her visionary clarity about our environment—about our place in it and our responsibility for it—follows from close, almost scientific observations. The empirical side of Burko’s sensibility makes her a particularly strong photographer. Her camera provides her with the visual data she transforms with paint and paintbrush, yet the photographs included in this show are not merely informational.

These tightly framed images conjure up entire landscapes.

With fragments, she evokes immensities.

For decades, artists have been using visual images to illustrate political arguments. This is not what Burko does. Following her passion for landscape to distant places, she produces not detachable arguments but images impossible to extricate from her—sometimes arduous—experience. Her paintings recall immersive visits to extraordinary places. In viewing these works, we retrace Burko’s path. Feeling her passions and her concerns, we can understand them as personal or political or—again—as both at once. Hers is a politics that begins with passionate attentiveness and leads us wherever we are inspired to go.

–Carter Ratcliff

Carter Ratcliff is a poet and art critic. Among his books on art are The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art, Andy Warhol: Portraits, and Georgia O’Keeffe: “The Great American Thing.” His most recent book of poetry is Arrivederci, Modernismo.

Burko was particularly eager to visit Iceland, for it is the most volcanically active nation in the world. Traveling there for the first time in June 2001, she returned just two months later. On

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Aldeyjarfoss 2, 2004, oil on canvas, 72” x 42”

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Godafoss 5, 2004, oil on canvas, 60” x 84”

Gullfoss 3, 2003, oil on canvas, 42” x 72”

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Geddes Run Creek 1, 2005, oil on canvas, 60” x 50”

Petit Creuse, Wissahickon, 1995, oil on canvas, 65” x 92”

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Geddes Run Creek 2, 2005, oil on canvas, 74” x 48”

Dettifoss 2, 2004, oil on canvas, 42” x 72”

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Aldeyjarfoss 1, 2004, oil on canvas, 84” x 60”

Gullfoss 2, 2002, oil on canvas, 50” x 81”

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Godafoss 2, 2002-03, oil on canvas, 48” x 74”

Lago di Casa Rosa, 1994, oil on canvas, 36” x 72”

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Bellagio Revisited, 1995, oil on canvas, 42” x 72”

Glazier Jokulskarlon, 2005, oil on canvas, 32” x 50”

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Into the Pacific 1, 1985-86, oil on canvas, 88” x 50”

Canal Spring 1 (Edition A/P), 2011, archival inkjet print, 30� x 30�

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Canal Spring 4 (Edition 3/3), 2011, archival inkjet print, 30� x 30�

Everglades (Edition 1/3), 2012, archival inkjet print, 30� x 30�

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Anhinga Trail (Edition 1/3), 2012, archival inkjet print, 30� x 30�

Opal, June 3 (Edition 1/3), 2011, archival inkjet print, 20” x 20”

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Porcelain Basin, June 2, (Edition 1/3), 2011, archival inkjet print, 20� x 20�

Diane Burko

Born: 1945, Brooklyn, NY Education: Skidmore College, NY, (BS, 1966) | University of Pennsylvania, PA, (MFA, 1969)

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2012 Diane Burko: Water Matters, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2011 Diane Burko: Photo Show, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Politics of Snow II, The Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, NJ 2010 Politics of Snow, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Imprints in the Landscape, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2007 Diane Burko: Closer to Home, Philadelphia International Airport, Philadelphia, PA 2006 Flow, Tufts University Art Gallery, Aidekman Arts Center, Medford, MA and James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA 2005 Landscapes: Paint/Pixel, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ 2004 Earth, Water, Fire, Ice, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2001 The Volcano Series, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 1999 A Sense of Place: Paintings by Diane Burko, The Parthenon Museum, Nashville, TN 1995-96 Land Survey: 1979-1995 - Paintings by Diane Burko.

Various venues 1994 Luci ed Ombra di Bellagio: The Light and Shadow of Bellagio, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 1991 Diane Burko at Giverny, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC 1988 Diane Burko, 1985-1987, Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 1987 Fifteen Years: 1972-1987, Hollins College, Roanoke, VA 1983 Waterways of Pennsylvania,Various venues in PA Stefanotti Gallery, New York, NY 1980 The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Morris Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Stefanotti Gallery, New York, NY Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2013 Sensing Change, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, PA 2012 Looking Back at Earth: Contemporary Environmental Photography from the Hood Museum of Art’s Collection, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 2011-12 Value of Water, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, NY Double Exposure and Politics of Snow, Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA 2011 Women Photographers, Dubois Gallery, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA Unstable Ground, Tang Art Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 2010-11 Same Difference, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Annenberg Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2009 Trouble in Paradise: Examining Discord Between Nature and Society, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ Seduced: the Relevance of Landscape in the 21st Century, Guilford Art Center, Guilford, CT 2006 The Grand Canyon: From Dream to Icon, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

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2004

Terrestrial Forces, Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL 2003 Extreme Landscape, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ 2002-03 The American River, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT 1994 Landscape: Work by Women Artists, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 1992 International Contemporary Art Fair, Yokohama, Japan New Viewpoints: Contemporary American Women Realists, Seville World Expo, American Pavillion, Spain 1991 Fragile Objects: Landscape Into Art, New Visions Gallery, Ithaca, NY 1989 Espace Culturel de Saint-Germain-des-Angles, Evreux, France 1987 Perspectives, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 1985 The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1984-85 Grand Canyon Revisited, Denver Museum of Natural History 1982 Realism in the Grand Style, Stefanotti Gallery, New York, NY Perspective on Contemporary American Realism, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1981 The American Landscape: Recent Developments, Whitney Museum of American Art Contemporary Landscape Painting, Taft Museum, Cincinnati, OH 1979 Stedman Art Gallery, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ 1977 Twenty Landscape Painters, Summit Art Center, Summit, NJ Contemporary Reflections, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT Contemporary Works on Paper by Women, Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, CA 1976 Philadelphians in Washington, Pyramid Gallery, Washington, DC 1971 Concepts/Drawings, Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 1969 Two Women: Paintings by Burko & Yanan, University Arts League, Philadelphia, PA SELECTED AWARDS AND COMMISSIONS Artic Circle Expedition: 2013 - Selected member of expedition to sail around Svalbard Norway Lifetime Achievement Award, WCA, 2011 Residence Fellowship at the Bellagio Center, The Rockefeller Foundation, September 1993 National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, 1991-92, 1985-86 Distinguished Achievement Award, Skidmore College, 1991 Residence Fellowship at Giverny, Readers Digest Foundation, April September 1989 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artists Grant, 1989, 1981 Visiting Fellowship to Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM, November 1982, 1980

Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com