- (US)
- Friday 19 September | 15:00 - 23:00 | Duvelhok
- Saturday 20 September | 15:00 - 23:00 | Duvelhok
- Sunday 21 September | 15:00 - 23:00 | Duvelhok
GUYBURWELL
...started his artistic endeavors as a child, creating prolifically since the age of 5. Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, he started his commercial art career providing illustration for local newspapers, murals in nightclubs, and posters for underground rock clubs while working at a variety of record stores, fostering the early synthesis between music and art that permeates much of his current work.
"I love music and try to bring a personal angle to the images I create. I have a variety of drawing styles in my arsenal. I try to pick just the right style for the subject or project."
Moving to Portland, Oregon provided a more dynamic, progressive and supportive artistic landscape and his work flourished. Featuring original pen and ink work, GUYBURWELL's distinctive black and white posters were soon wallpapering Portland, advertising local and national acts for the many venues in the city. Local attention to his poster art brought a financially lucrative position designing big budget television commercials for Vinton Studios, the stop motion birthplace of Claymation. "I learned about satifying the needs of advertising campaigns and art directors and how the process is laid out for working in that realm." GUYBURWELL designed characters and content for commericals for M&Ms, Three Musketeers, Kraft, Chili's, Planters, UPS and a wide variety of cleansers, foods, and many other products. He worked helping design The PJ's television series and various television pilots before pulling up stakes and heading for Los Angeles for a year before making his way down the coast to lounge in the sun of San Diego before returning to the Pacific Northwest in late 2004.
Adding album cover illustration and design, painting, clothing graphics and magazine work to his portfolio, he also designed conceptual material for video games and animated projects for Nickelodeon, while continuing his newspaper work and poster work. He even returned to writing and drawing comic books.
GUYBURWELL's new devotion to painting has been bolstered by several gallery shows in the last year in San Diego, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Manchester, England, and a recurring annual outing in Portland, with additional shows along the way.
"My paintings and illustrations don't handle any serious topics in a head-on manner. Some of them have underlying currents that project my own skewed sense of humor on a certain topical notion. Sometimes they make wry comment on a social issue in the undercurrents of the piece. I try to go for 'fun' or 'cool' in my work and that seems to hit the right chords with my viewers."
"I am a commercial artist, foremost, and bring a degree of commerciality to everything I do. Ultimately I want to produce what I want to produce, whatever the venue, outlet, medium. I work constantly, be it for pay or pleasure, day in and day out. All day every day. Home or away, I am always thinking about work. It's not manic, but it's always there. I have a photograph of myself on my wall, age three or four or five, bent in concentration over a sheet of paper, pencil nub in hand, and it?s been a constant reminder, and an ideal to live up to."
"His distinctive line work can be like a kick in the teeth, all hard lines and action, giving the impression that the art might cut your skin if you get too close. At other times, he can fill the lines with helium, floating the images just beyond the grip of reality in pools of color that aren't meant to coexist peacefully. Any which way you approach the images, give them a good close look because there are things to see well beyond the cursory glance. But never. Ever. Turn your back on them. If you want flat, boring, empty, meaningless, common, pseudo contemporary counter culture corn, you can get that anywhere. For GUYBURWELL, you can only come to the source."
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