["A Proposition" - Acrylic on canvas, 20” x 40”, 2025] A compositional reimagining of John Millais’ “Isabella” from 1848. In Millais’ work, Isabella is a woman of court whose brothers disapprove of her brutish fiancé. They offer her a fruit while the table looks at each other with conspiratorial glances. Here is a contemporary parallel, wherein a vape device is offered to a young person on the periphery of a social group. The motivations here are not established.

["Wellness Check" - Acrylic on canvas, 10” x 20”, 2024] A slice-of-life compositional study, as well as a practice in perspective. This perspective is that of a person being checked on by authorities for unknown reasons, but presumably for a mental health crisis, as suggested by the standing medic.

["A Breaking Wave" - Acrylic on canvas, 16” x 32”, 2024] An exercise in sincere Romantic imagery, calling upon the classic trope of Venus emerging from the waves. Here the goddess and typical water nymphs are replaced by average men, attended by various animals associated with love and hunting, becoming a fantastical, totemic image of homoerotic youth and autogenesis.

["Pinfish in a Bucket" - Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”, 2024] An imagined “still life” of pinfish, often used as bait fish in saltwater regions. I had wanted to work on this image since going on a deep-sea fishing expenditure with my grandfather at that age of 16, and looking down at the doomed creatures, used to eventually doom other creatures.

["Antichrist" - Acrylic on canvas, 23” x 46”, 2024] This is a somewhat literal visual interpretation of the Beast from the Sea from the biblical Book of Revelations, as well as the attending Beast from the Earth, who promotes the authority of the Sea Beast. The Earth Beast is pictured in the bottom right corner, pointing the viewer from the cave back to the primary figure of the painting. The painting was inspired by my Catholic upbringing, the textural characteristics of AI imagery, and the nature of human extermination campaigns enabled by modern warfare technology.

["Killyjoy" - Acrylic on canvas, 25” x 50”, 2024] Inspired by Gregory Maguire’s Wicked novel, this work takes the American folk-mythology of Oz and stages it into a revisionist historical scene. In this part of the novel, the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, sends her companion dog to welcome the famous quartet of travelers to her castle, but is instead met with aggressive fear and ensuing violence.

["Sodomites" - Acrylic on canvas, 26” x 40”, 2024] Both a serious dedication to the generations of martyred homosexuals before me, and a darkly humorous reminder to my contemporary community of the occasionally-forgotten social position reserved for sexual deviants.

["Europa" - Acrylic on canvas, 22” x 30”, 2023] A variation on a mythological theme common to the classical and Baroque periods, but made contemporary through expressive coloring and clothing. This was inspired by a breakup where my ex-partner traveled to Spain shortly after.

["A Seat at the Table" - Acrylic on canvas, 31” x 38”, 2022] A personal artwork following the tradition of mystical Symbolist painting and the staged portraiture of artists like Gauguin. A green-skinned Jesus welcomes the viewer into what is presumably the last and ultimate supper with the community of the deceased.

["Man with a Hammer" - Acrylic on canvas, 31” x 38”, 2022] This painting is a companion to “A Seat at the Table” and serves as the harsher underside to the previous soft-expressioned Christ figure. This version of Jesus looks down at the viewer with coy illegibility, ready to render judgment, punishment, and sexual titillation.

[“Coming Through” - Acrylic and ink transfer on canvas, 25” x 44”, 2022] This was an experiment in image transfer techniques with matte gel paste and a printed image, producing the mysterious dark figure in the background. Primarily a technical and anatomical study, it also works as a literal illustration of divine emanation.

["Tabula Rasa" - Acrylic and molding paste on canvas, 32” x 51”, 2021] Inspired by the Montreal Experiments of 1957-64, under the direction of Donald Ewen Cameron at Allan Memorial Institute, and his attempts to perfect his “psychic driving” technique that tried to direct patient’s mental faculties using drug-induced comas and recorded messages

["Rinna" - Acrylic on canvas, 19" x 33", 2021] Inspired by the work of contemporary painter Sam McKinniss, this is a study of one moment during the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 7 reunion. Lisa Rinna, the woman depicted, is being given back a peace-making gift she gave to another woman earlier in the season. The camera closes in on her face as a single tear falls down her cheek. This painting functions both as a formal practice and a slightly humorous commemoration of an iconic reality TV moment for those who know the context. Even without context it remains a serious endeavor in capturing a glamorous woman in a moment of high drama.

["Psychopomps" - Acrylic on canvas paper, 24” x 28”, 2021] This was a relatively simple practice in using basic, complementary color blocking to convey narrative. In this case I interpret the archetype of a psychopomp, an entity that guides souls into the afterlife, as a kind of strange maternal creature that cuts the newly-deceased out of their old flesh and coddles them into the new world of bright, synthetic green.

["The Bride" - Acrylic on canvas, 25” x 33”, 2021] An ambiguous scene of emasculation, control, and horror. Inspired by research into post-war, CIA-led psychological studies and Ari Aster’s filmography, this is part of a sequential series of paintings illustrating an imagined religious cult. This portfolio does not show the broader series this was a part of as it stands as a singular work.

[“Jean-Luc and Ghislaine” - Acrylic on canvas, 20” x 34”, 2021] Another practice in recreating a digitally-sourced image and treating its formal aspects, this time using negatively-charged imagery. This is a portrait of collaborators with Jeffrey Epstein, photographed on his infamous island in 2003.

["Backstage" - Acrylic on canvas, 19” x 30”, 2021] A formal figure study using an image that circulated on Tumblr when I was using that platform the most as a teenager. In that way it is a technical exercise, an ode to one of my favorite musical artists, and an homage to the digital scene that inspired me in my youth.

["Strange Beast" - Acrylic on canvas, 26” x 40”, 2021] This is one of the first paintings I finished when my undergraduate classes returned to being in-person. The composition comes from an ecology textbook that featured a picture of a dog, which I reconstructed into an entirely different creature in solemn captivity. Like “Dressmaker”, it served as a reflection on our isolated states under quarantine, especially as I was living in a studio apartment.

["Dressmaker" - Acrylic and thread on canvas, 44” x 32”, 2021] A reinventing of Le Pho’s “Nativity” (1941) into a secular image of an artist at work in a pastoral setting. Made while working out of my studio apartment and taking undergraduate courses over Zoom during the pandemic.

Painting

Robert Aaron Burleson

burleson734@gmail.com

Painting

Drawing

Robert Aaron Burleson

burleson734@gmail.com