BOBBIE BURGERS, Vancouver Painter
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Photo by Kim Christie
"Bobbie Burgers"
Bobbie Burgers.
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"Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral"
Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral.
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"Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral"
Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral.
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"Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral"
Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral.
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"Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral"
Bobbie Burgers, untitled floral.
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Bobbie Burgers, "Nothing to do today but smile"
Bobbie Burgers, "Nothing to do today but smile", 2004 acrylic on canvas 60" x 60"
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Bobbie Burgers, "Cure for Heartache"
Bobbie Burgers, "Cure for Heartache", 2004 multipanel acrylic on canvas 72" x 72".
BOBBIE BURGERS
Vancouver painter Bobbie Burgers creates florals that overwhelm, and make you feel alive.
By Beverly Cramp
Step through Bobbie Burgers’ front entrance and you are met by a large, two-panel painting on a startlingly white wall awash in vivid white daylight. One panel is signature Burgers – huge, wildly coloured flowers in reds, yellows and oranges, executed with exuberant brushstrokes; the other panel a simple line drawing of flowers against a bright blue background.
“Flowers became my focus only because I wanted a medium to express colour,” she says, pouring from a white teapot into white porcelain cups. “It’s not that I have an obsession with flowers – there just seems to be an endless variety of shape and form and colour.”
Burgers likes the freedom to explore varying perspectives, flitting from form to form, from style to style. “I find that I’m constantly going into the flowers and then back out. I can be abstract, or I can verge on high realism. Then I can step back again and make flowers look more traditional. I also like chopping up the images into panels, making it all about the colour. The multipanel pieces are like putting a puzzle together… not worrying about each section, how realistic it is. When it comes together it’s like a block of colour and light.”
Her home, a renovated 1950s bungalow featured two years ago in an interior design magazine, is a showcase for Burgers’ vibrant works of art. Visual clutter is virtually absent in the living room, kitchen and dining area, as if the rooms, with their reserved palette of whites and creams, were designed to not compete with the paintings. Nor do the paintings compete with each other. Rarely do more than one or two paintings hang in any room.
“I like having a blank canvas. That’s why I have the house white and simple, as neutral as possible. It’s restful. Too many paintings on every corner would be distracting,” she says. Considering that she has two daughters aged four and five, it is remarkable that Burgers’ home remains almost clutter-free. The visual drama emanates mainly from her paintings.
With an architect father and a mother who was an interior designer, Burgers says she grew up appreciating that environment is critical. “My parents always lived in beautiful homes. It was always about creating a beautiful environment and an inspirational place. I led a very good life. I didn’t have great angst.”
It’s not that Burgers has always led a charmed life. “I got a divorce two years ago. Throughout that whole time I painted frantically. Painting made me feel as if everything was okay and life was fine. I had to keep moving forward and thinking about positive things. It’s about choosing your reality. You can choose to look at things in a dark way but I choose to look at most things in a positive way.”
Of her early motifs, Burgers says: “I started off with explosive, falling apart still lifes of floral bouquets that were quite grand. The petals would be flying off like there was a wind blowing through. Then, as I got technically better at rendering flowers, I became more precise. I could go more in-depth into the actual creation of floral perspective and light and shadow. I got closer and closer into the flower until, a year or two ago, I did my first single giant blow-up flowers on big canvases.”
After 10 years of finding her muse in flowers, Burgers brushes off people who insist she must be sick of painting them. “To me there’s always something new to explore. It’s exciting! I often re-visit themes I’ve already explored,” she says. “Brushstroke and colour are key. The subject doesn’t matter after that. I want to have a skilled brushstroke. Looking back at the last four or five years, I can see myself getting more confident in my brushstroke.”
Artists who influence Burgers, none of whom she says she wants to emulate, are the late American abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell, Gordon Smith for his masterful brushstroke, Gathie Falk for her playfulness and Janet Fish, a contemporary realist.
Burgers has some specific goals when she paints. “A still life can look very traditional. A floral can look like nothing more than a rendering. But I want them to be larger than life, undeniably there, sucking you in.”
She loves nothing more than converting viewers who usually prefer more contemporary, abstract work. “When they see my art,” she says, “I want those people to say, ‘Oh, that’s kind of juicy.’ I want them to see that it’s alive, that you can’t help but notice it. I want to win over some of the people who think florals are not for them. That’s why I work in large scale and more on the loose side, with big brushstrokes very thickly applied.”
She describes an interview with an art critic from Montreal who said he had no interest in florals. Then he admitted that as he was walking by her Ottawa show, her work had caught his attention. “He loved the vibrancy, the colours and the size. When he told me that, I thought ‘you are the exact person I am trying to cater to.’ Here’s this manly man saying, ‘Well, I kind of like it.’
“I want viewers to be emotionally drawn in. My goal is to overwhelm you, to make you feel alive and good. Like there is possibility and hope.”
Bobbie Burgers is represented by Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver and Toronto, Vanderleelie Gallery in Edmonton, Gallerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal, Galerie St. Laurent + Hill, Ottawa, Gallery Susan de Witt in Florida, Hubert Gallery, New York, and Foster White Gallery, Seattle.
An exhibition of new works by Bobbie Burgers is on view at Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, March 5 to 26, 2005, and at Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto, July 9 to 23, 2005.
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
3045 Granville St, Vancouver, British Columbia V6H 3J9
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