Dallas, Texas mixed media artist Derrock Burnett
Burnett has exhibited in Chicago, New York, and Miami. His award-winning work has been featured in Fox’s hit show Empire, season 2, in the magazine New American Paintings, and was also a winner in the 2013 Bombay Sapphire artisan series.
Burnett’s artwork can be defined as mixed media through the use of various materials borrowed from a dayto-day context.
“My artwork explores contemporary African– American portraits as a representation of black identity. I build on these images using references to blackness in America and the African diaspora,” Burnett stated. “The work addresses ideas of diversity in blackness while borrowing from the language of graffiti, abstraction, Africa, the urban environment, and hip-hop. I repurpose materials and juxtapose both images with material on traditional and alternative supports. Through my work I seek to reclaim power back to the black image, searching inward exposing both the public/private conversations of black culture influenced by the aesthetic we chose for ourselves.”
The materials Burnett selects in his artwork focus on color and texture, they are brought in or found to be reused, remixed, and appropriately altered back into the work.
“Concentrating on the portrait and figure, I can create compositions that are as expressive as they are layered in meaning and material. As my work is evolving the use of materials to create mixed media pieces has manifested, as prints, sculpture, drawings, and paintings. Expanding my media choices has brought me to a multi-layered exploration of imagery in black culture featuring my twist on black portraiture. It is in this, I aim to explore the under-represented visual history of black art connecting it to past, present and future,” said Burnett.
Derrock Burnett was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. He received his Master’s of Fine Art degree with a concentration in painting from Indiana State University.
