EAST Interview: Urban Impressionist Daniel Burns

You spent many years working only in B & W (primarily with charcoal), then transitioned into color with paintings. What made you change?

Drawing is the fundamental of all the visual arts, and drawing with charcoal brings drawing down to its essentials - burnt wood. There’s a lot of looseness and freedom in that technique. It’s the most diverse and flexible medium. I stayed with charcoal because I like to do fast gesture drawings, and work from life. It’s vast, in the moment, free. Also because it is only contrasts - black and white - so you can focus on the composition, line, and textures. You can work an overall image a lot faster. I still work in charcoal.

I’d explored working in acrylics from the charcoal drawings, working to maintain the freshness and looseness of the drawings. I wanted to paint like I drew, with the same aliveness and spontaneity.

In New York, I transitioned from acrylics to oils. Oils handle more like charcoal - they’re more malleable, you can mix them on the canvas and they don’t dry as fast. They have the flexibility that I’m looking for.

Paint (color) adds to the complexity and allows for broader expression. Now tones can be warm or cool, and intense or earthy. They play along side each other. Black and white (charcoal) to color (paint) is a natural progression. I wanted to develop the fundamentals, develop my instincts through charcoal, and moving on to paints was the next step.

You’ve been in NYC for two years. Tell us about the work you did there.

I first engaged New York artistically through taking classes at the Art Students League. I studied with Philip Lawrence Sherrod, a teacher there who founded the New York Street Painters. After seeing my drawings, he invited me out with him and his group to paint in the streets.

We’d paint two or three canvases a day. It was a wonderful experience. I’d always been drawn to working outdoors, but had been shy about working in public. You’re leaving yourself exposed; it’s like writing your dairy on a billboard. I’ve learned to work through that now, though. Our first day out, we were down at 6th Avenue and 23rd Street in Midtown...people were shoulder-to-shoulder with halal vendor trucks, news racks, parked cars - there was barely enough room to stand. We set up right at the intersection, right in the middle of one of the busiest corners of New York City. Exhilarating.

Was there a difference in your creative process in NY as opposed to here in Austin?

The difference was that when I was here in Austin before, I was working in more isolated places. Or, just making quick drawings outside and finishing them in the studio. It was a more solitary pursuit. But, I prefer the life that exists on location. There’s a flow of life that drives me to work outside. Working on location is foundational to me. It’s about being in the moment, working with the present. The paintings are a reflection of that. They’re my offering.