Christopher Burk sees beauty where most would never look. Complex power and communication lines strung from poles soar and droop across dusky skies above nondescript urban buildings. “The paintings are about quiet moments in the urban landscape. Mainly at night when even more of this quietness and mysteriousness happens,” he says. “My eye gravitates toward the organized chaos of the poles and wires that is considered by many to be an eyesore. I find beauty in that. I’m giving the viewer the tools to turn toward their environments and giving them the capability to find beauty in the simplest things.”
Summer Nocturne I, oil on panel, 24 x 24"His urban paintings are in an exhibition at George Billis Gallery in New York through December 7.
Among the paintings is Summer Nocturne I, a dominant pole towering over a small rectangle of the top of floor of a nondescript building. “The overall composition overrides the building which is just there to fill it out,” he says. “When I started painting, it organically happened that my eye was looking for the unorthodox. I like to leave out the human element. When I’m painting a nocturne, a window doesn’t lend itself to action. With the night scenes and a lighted window, the human element is there behind the scenes. There is life.” The wires are connecting people even if the people are not visible, bringing electric power and telecommunications.
Illuminated Nocturne V, oil on panel, 10 x 8"Burk walks around the city “to look for things. I take pictures on my phone and make notes about what the color was at that moment because it isn’t in the photos.” He paints on square wood panels and starts “building up in thin layers, sometimes 20 of them, and tighten up as I go. I try to stay true to the scenes the way I found them. Sometimes I’ll edit something out that’s not working for the composition.”
Beige House Nocturne, oil on panel, 20 x 20"Burk adds, “The utilities and structures are man’s presence in the landscape. The paintings are presentations, not necessarily a comment.”
He quotes Henry Miller, “What the painter sees he is duty-bound to share. Usually he makes us see and feel what ordinarily we ignore or are immune to. His manner of approaching the world tells us, in effect, that nothing is hideous, nothing is stale, flat and unpalatable unless it be our own power of vision.” — 
Billboard Dusk 1, oil on panel, 24 x 24"George Billis Gallery 525 W. 26th Street, Ground Floor • New York, NY 10001 • (212) 645-2621 • www.georgebillis.com
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