SUE BURICKSON
TRANSMEDIA PORTRAITS--THE INNER LIFE OF CENTAURS/You Need to Get a Life
Sue Burickson on Transmedia Portraits: For over ten years, I have been fascinated by the movements of energy during meditation, which I explore in my painting series, "Separations in the Silence.” My desire to portray this inner landscape more fully led me to move towards 3 dimensional media. Inspired by Bill Viola’s, “The Crossing,” among others, I turned to sculpture with embedded videos and "Transmedia Portraits" was born. While I began as a portrait painter of Civil War Reenactors, my work evolved and led me in a new direction, as a conceptual new media sculptor/painter/video artist.
As I continue to investigate new interactive technologies for my installations, I think about the effect of scale on the viewer and the value of engaging the viewer more directly. In my series, “The Inner Life of Centaurs,” I create life-sized Centaur sculptures with videos in the chest and head. The Centaur symbolizes our two natures: the spiritual or higher nature and the material or lower nature. The body of the Centaur is covered with gold seashells to represent the outer persona; the gold shells tarnish over time. This series explores the relationship between body, mind and feelings. "You Need To Get a Life"speaks to the effect of obsessive thinking on the attempt of the feeling to contact the mind. My inspiration is drawn from Gurdjieff, Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism and Sufism.
Born in Brooklyn, Sue Burickson attended college at Radcliffe, UCLA and UC/Berkeley. For 10 years she studied with Paul Reynard, a pupil of Fernand Leger, and also at the Art Students' League, SVA, Manhattan Graphics and the National Academy. Her studio is in Brooklyn. Her website is: www.sueburickson.com