Tennessee artist Jan Burleson says the making of collages plays a double role as a meditative practice and as a study for her jazzy and vibrant paintings.
Artist: Burleson spent her early life in Johnson City, nestled near the hills of Upper East Tennessee. Long before completing her BFA in painting and drawing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2016, she had both a BS and an MS in social work and spent more than 35 years as a licensed clinical social worker.
Along the way, Burleson studied photography at the college level and spent valuable hours creating darkroom photographs. She also studied with accomplished local watercolor artists in her current hometown of Athens, TN.
Studio: Her home studio is in a space that was originally an upstairs sleeping porch of the home, built in the 1930s. The studio has a lovely expanse of Northern light.
Art & materials: Abstract oil paintings, currently from collage studies, oil on canvas. Also Ink drawings on paper.
During the pandemic, Burleson found a good use for the many magazines that had piled up in her home. She used cut and torn images from those accumulated magazines, now history pieces in themselves, in her collages as an exploratory process.
Popular:
- Oil on canvas paintings from the “Things Pile Up” suite ($800 to $2,000).
- Ink drawings from the “Wetland” series ($35 to $85).
Other favorites: Oil on canvas knifed paintings from “Wetland” series.
Inspirations: Many including:
- Honoring personal history and experience, sense of place, presence and absence.
- Multilayered conceptualization of beauty.
- Restructuring found imagery.
- Texture and history of old structures.
- History of abstraction.
- The natural world.
Process: Her current work begins by making a collage from clips of cultural and world happenings combined with patterns in a formally cohesive stack. The collage becomes the study for the oil painting that follows.
Favorite tools: Brush and paint, sometimes palette knife
Recent honor: Juror’s Citation, Members’ Juried Exhibition, Association for Visual Arts, Chattanooga, TN. 2022.
Recent project: “Synthesize: Shape, Surface, Saturation,” a group exhibition with Carl Gombert, Carrie Pendergrass and Kelly Spell at Knoxville Arts and Culture Alliance’s Emporium.
What’s next: A remix of Synthesize: Shape, Surface, Saturation at The Arts Center, Athens, TN. Feb. 21-April 8.
Where to buy: janburleson.com.
Get social:
- Instagram: @jan_burleson_
- Website: janburleson.com
