mallory burka fine art

My artwork is a plethora of different mediums. I am interested in every type of art-making and am always interested in learning new techniques.

 

Oil Paintings

My oil paintings are a series of painterly-realistic depictions of structural and natural landmarks in West Virginia.  My hope is to do my part in recreating the artistic nature of my hometown, as its creative spirit has been depleted until recent years. I am, also, interested in how technology allows us to see reality in a skewed way. I aim to photograph these destinations with a distorted perspective in order to bring attention to all of the interesting places in West Virginia. My pieces’ subjects are chosen based on if I find the environment to be compositionally interesting in a panoramic or fish eye lens perspective.  I want to do something that is unusual, possibly never seen before by many people, certainly something I have never seen before, and something that I find a challenge in. 

I decided to create a series of oil paintings using references from panoramic and fish eye photographs that I take myself of locations I feel are under looked or need to be seen in a different way. I chose which type of photograph to use based on the environment and its surroundings. Typically, a larger space will be a panoramic and a smaller, enclosed space like on a downtown street becomes a fish eye. For my panoramic pieces, using oil paint on drop cloth canvas wrapped on stretcher bars, I create grids to sketch my initial reference lines and then, spray a fixative to hold down the graphite so that it does not mix into my colors. I like that the drop cloth adds a texture beyond the paint to the image and creates a deeper dimension to the painterly quality. For my fish eye works, I print the images to the size of my circular 12-inch canvas panels and imprint the lines of the photograph onto the canvas with graphite as to create the sketch to paint from, followed by a fixative spray layer. 

My current work is completely different from any work that I have done before. Before I began this series, I was confused about what type of art I was the most connected to and most able to do. I experimented with portraiture, abstract, still life, but never found my niche. As I thought about the next project to do, I knew I wouldn’t be happy with the subjects that I had worked on before, so I began to research and was introduced to artists on social media that worked in hyperrealism and a painterly realism. In one of my portrait paintings, there was a house in the background that I ended up being the only thing that I was pleased with in that painting, so I thought that I would enjoy painting architecture and cityscapes more than people. 

Whether bringing attention back to West Virginia or visiting other locations, the compositionally stimulating environments inside and outside of my home state inspire my artwork. My combination of oil paint and drop cloth allows me to create a painterly-realistic style that from afar can seem photographic, but become obvious as paintings as the viewer approaches. I want to peak the viewers’ interest and persuade them to want to visit these sites.  

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Drawings

My drawings are mostly commissions, but revolve around portraits. I have always loved to draw people, their differing features make drawing them interesting because no two portraits are the same. Some of the work I have done is based on those who have passed on. The family always gives me a story about who this person was, or is, and the stories make the drawings that much more personal. These pieces are in graphite pencil or colored pencils on paper.

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