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“Immersive research, for me, entails many days, weeks or months researching the groups of people I draw. My work centres around the lives of people who, amongst many other things, have an identity centred around place, family or clan, formed over many years, often centuries. Therefore, I am, by definition, always an outsider as I work. The work is often solitary and isolated, but I am sustained by the wish to reflect those rooted lives out to others.”
Researching groups and communities, in situ, across the country, then drawing in her studio, Christy Burdock creates works that are based in the here and now, but steeped in philosophy and historical narrative. Christy has an interest in ideas, religion and heritage, communicating and reinterpreting emerging culture, as it manifests within contemporary society. Her story telling illuminates the knots and shoots emerging through collective consciousness, creating wider culture. Research is immersive and in reference to micro societies and museum collections. She refers to the work of the old masters and works within the tradition of George Orwell, William Hogarth and Stanley Spencer, artists that documented life around them. |
“I shine a dim and gentle light into corners of British life. By observing, imagining, drawing and painting, I seek to illuminate, and in so doing, pay homage to my subjects”
Christy Burdock |
Christy won the The Gordon Peter Pickard Travel Award when at the Royal College of Art, to travel transatlantic on the QM2 cruise ship, London to New York. It was populated by fun loving octogenarians and various other groups singing and dancing their way across the ocean.
Christy was awarded the artist in residence at Quentin Blake’s gallery, The House of Illustration in Kings Cross London, culminating in a solo show. She proposed she research the staff, the visitors and surrounding community. Within the gallery she found a high level of finely honed skills in the professionals working behind the scenes, from curators to conservators.