Artist’s Statement

Mark making has been a foundational element of who I am since my earliest memories as a child growing up in Southern California (Pasadena).  Coloring with Crayola Crayons and using (and smelling) the smelly marker pens in grade school art classes throughout the 1970s.  Drawing, photography (and Yearbook) and painting classes across the 1980s.  Summer Session at Phillips Academy Andover that included a painting/drawing class in the mid-1980s.  Summer Session at RISD focused on painting in the late 1980s.  Art History and Art Studio double major from UC Davis in 1989.  Practicing artist (painting), including juried shows and commercial success, in the early 1990s.  Also in the early 1990s, a three-month cross-country solo driving trip that resulted in my moving to the East Coast; the trip also included intentional visits to the permanent collections of over 30 museums in cities small and large across the U.S., which enabled me to see first-hand art objects that I had previously only seen in reproduction as well as gain an appreciation for the vastness of the landscape and respect and admiration for the people and places of the contiguous 48.  A painting class at the Corcoran School of Art (now closed) to test my facility in the late 2000s.  A smattering of sketching, photographing, doodling across the 2000s, 2010s and into the 2020s.  And now in 2026, the launch of Robert G. Burrows Art – a deliberate and conscious rededication to my artistic capacities and capabilities.  Working out of my home studio (the garage), I very much look forward to sharing my work, both from the past and what I will continue to create from here, across different media, subject matter, and scales – a body of work that captures my individual mark making approach and, as a result, who I am and how I see the world (people, objects, landscapes).  Enjoy.