Brian Burke House in Murray Harbour presents its third exhibition, Light Before Shadow, featuring 25 enigmatic paintings by the late Brian Burke. The show includes works that have never been exhibited before. The paintings are displayed throughout the house, built in the 1880s, which served as the artist’s final home and studio. It remains as he left it.
Burke repeatedly included visual symbols like polka dots, flags, light fixtures, flowers, frames, mirrors, pictures within pictures, halos, and shadows in his figurative compositions. In this new selection of paintings, the power of light and colour precedes the shadows. Within this thematic thread, one finds questions about our being. It was the driving force in an intense act of painting throughout the artist’s work.
“I’m concerned with directing the viewer’s attention to the results of a painting process itself,” said Burke in 2013. “The work [then] fails to provide the viewer with definitive answers—so form takes precedent over content.”
Brian Burke, 1952–2017, was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He drew inspiration from his many studios over the years with extended stays in New York and Europe. In his last six years he worked both in Lucerne, Switzerland, and Murray Harbour, PEI.
His work was extensively exhibited in galleries in North America and Europe, including a retrospective in 2019 at Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown. His paintings can be found in numerous collections, including Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown; The Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton and Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland.
Brian Burke House is located at 1345 Main Street, Murray Harbour. The exhibition is open from August 1 to September 19, Thursday to Saturday, from 1–4 pm.