Calvin Burton’s work evolves out of a simplified formal language into a series of repetitions, variations, and syncopations, which analogize various cyclical phenomena: weather, tides, tectonic shifts, profits and losses, moods, pulses. At the same time the artist's physical engagement with materials incorporates the presence and scale of the body, further shaping the rhythmic structure. The interaction of these two spheres—the gestural and the geometric—dissolves the primacy of one or the other, while alluding to the dissolution of parallel dichotomies, like body and mind. The paintings are intended to be neither visual/spatial nor physical/flat, but somewhere in the center, where sight meets touch.
Calvin Burton lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been included in exhibitions at Present Company, Brooklyn; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Branch Gallery, Durham; Bronx Museum, New York; Appetite, Buenos Aires; Raw & Co., Cleveland; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond; Samson Projects, Boston; Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, and Galería Ramón Alva de la Canal, Veracruz. Burton was awarded a Virginia Museum Artist Fellowship and a Fellowship at the Bronx Museum, Artist in the Marketplace program. He holds a BA in Art and Mathematics from Brown University and an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University.