When describing Sean’s art, Rock and Roll is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe it was the establishments where we first saw his work – Bela Dubby and Spitfire Saloon…but upon further investigation, he also verified that most of his ideas are inspired by rock lyrics – taking a line that sticks in his head, rethinking it over, and finding a way to express his interpretation of it.
One of the more curious aspects of his work lies within his concept of connecting some of his pieces within the actual display…where the art moves beyond its own paper, extends into the background matte, and connects to another work – adding a layer of action and interplay between the two separate drawings that each would be missing on their own…it adds a fourth dimension in a way that “breaking the fourth wall” is achieved in stage and film…through interaction with the audience, only his subjects are moving beyond their papers and interacting with themselves.
Another quality about Sean and his art that I completely love and respect is his ability to use himself as a layer within the art. Not many artists have enough balls to poke fun at themselves. But he does it for the larger good of the concept, using himself as an example of humanity in order to convey a statement which might otherwise come off as preachy and didactic.
You can see more of Sean’s art at myspace.com/seanburns151
ON PORTRAITS
“Recently, I started doing a series of portraits of friends. Not just straight-on portraits, I’m trying to get their personality more than how they actually look. It makes them a lot more interesting to those who don’t actually know the person. And I guess that’s because of the lack of concept behind doing portraits of friends, it lets me have fun playing around with the forms without having to worry about what the piece is saying. A lot of my other works are really concept driven, so with the portraits I was able to focus on the physical aspects of the art.”
ON BEING LIGHTER
“And I’m not trying to make any serious commentaries on the world, if I do – then at least it’s kind of funny. A lot of my older stuff was really serious, soul searching type stuff…and it got to be a little much. So now I stay away from being heavy handed, and people really respond to the art a lot more and are able to take it as humor, or if they want – look into it a bit deeper and see something more.”
ON LIMITIING
“I have to give myself rules. Over the last couple of years, I restricted myself to just using graphite on paper…maybe with just a little ink or color – but not using the color as an afterthought, more like a highlight. You have so many possibilities on what you can do, like in school [SEAN RECENTLY GRADUATED FROM C.I.A.], the teachers were always saying – “you should try this, you should try that”…but it gets so overwhelming that you can never sit down and get really good at one thing. So I decided to not worry about how to paint with oils, I mean I could, but if I just stick with one thing it eliminates a lot of the decisions I’d have to make. So if I have an idea, I know what framework I have to work within to express that idea instead of sitting around and wondering if I should make it an oil painting or mixed media collage or woodblock print or sculpture…that decision is already made so I can just go straight to focusing on the idea itself.”
ON NARCISSISM
“For awhile there, I was doing a lot of self-portraits. And it got to the point that I started to see them as portraits of a narcissist. And everything was just my face repeated everywhere…I thought it was funny. Especially when I was giving my B.F.A. presentation…I was standing in a room surrounded by pictures of myself and people where like – “why do you make all these pictures of yourself?”, and I’m like – “because I’m a narcissist, what better subject than myself?”…but really, the statements that I was making were hard to make about someone else, so if I made them about myself – then it was funny. People could read into what I was saying and know that I was applying it to myself, so it’s safe for them to think about it. I was making myself the punch-line so that you could laugh at it, and also at the same time – think about the statement and apply it to yourself, but not have me yelling at you. Like me not saying “You’re a jerk because you’re a liar”, but instead – “I’m a jerk because I’m a liar”…and it has a totally different aspect to it, it’s much more accessible.”
