SANTA FE, NM.- As an announcement of its representation of Santa Fe-based painter Maurice Burns, Peters Projects announces a major retrospective of his work titled Various Forms of Association. Born in Talladega, Alabama as an Indian-African-Scots descendant, Maurice Burns found little educational or artistic opportunity in the Jim Crow era South. In 1949 his family moved to Gary, Indiana where a more welcoming school system encouraged Burns in a pursuit of engineering, in which he excelled. After being drafted during the Vietnam era, and later becoming a wealthy executive at a computer center in Chicago, Burns used a G.I. Bill to study at the Rhode Island School of Design where he studied art, excelling enough to receive a scholarship to the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpting in Maine. After a devastating studio fire in 1972 destroyed most of Burns’ early work, he used the rest of his G.I. Bill along with a scholarship from Skowhegan to study at the Royal College of Art in London, where Burns met and became friends with renowned Art Historian Sir Kenneth Clark. It was in London that Burns met and became close friends with the painter R. B. Kitaj. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Kitaj attended the Royal College of Art and spent many years living and working in London. His figurative paintings are electrified by bold movement and color. Though distinctive in their own respective styles, a shared influence can be found between Burns’ and Kitaj’s work.

Following graduation, Burns received two Macdowell Colony Fellowships at the Edward MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. In 1975, Burns was invited by John Torres to teach at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Burns has remained ever since.

Burns’ work is inspired by his love of music, jazz in particular. Miles Davis, Jimmy Yancy, swinging Harlem nightclubs, Southwestern honky-tonks and Cuban nightclubs are just a few of the subjects of his paintings which are notable for their vibrant color and superb composition. Additionally, some of Burns’ paintings inhabit a liminal, surreal space that includes Native American imagery and dream-like figures that appear to hover on the canvas. Through his exceptional draftsmanship and figurative work, Burns combines his fascination with African imagery with his love of the Southwestern desert landscape.

Burns work has been shown at: Royal College of Art, London, I.A.I.A. in Santa Fe, NM, The Fine Arts Museum of New Mexico, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, New Mexico, and Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was included in the 1977 book Black Artists of the New Generation by Elton Fax, and has been featured in the following publications: Santa Fe Art, Davenport’s Art Reference, Santa Fe Arts Journal, and THE Magazine. Various Forms of Association will be on view at Peters Projects through March, 2019.