Featured Artist: Erik T. Burke

Erik Burke (b. 1978) lives in Reno, NV and creates place-specific murals throughout the world. His latest work can be seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina, S. Korea, Italy, and closer to home in Reno. His work has been published in the book 'Street Art; The Best Urban Art from Around the World', 'Outdoor Gallery', The Huffington Post, Village Voice, and the NYTimes. He enjoys time with his family and living where there are NO mosquitos.

Erik's work showcases our Northern Nevada community through stunning visuals of our people, place, and time.  Erik's talent captures our community's triumphs and challenges in an emotional fashion. We are grateful to call Erik T. Burke one of our own and are proud to share his amazing talent with you on this Nevada Tomorrow site.

LEARN MORE ABOUT ERIK'S ART WORK @ ERIKTBURKE.COM

Eriks says of himself...

"My explorative nature has taken me to places surreal and commonplace. I use these opportunities to learn from our built environment, and the people and history that make them unique. Through these travels the changing geography becomes my muse, inspiring me to create intrinsically and intuitively to gain a sense of place.

I believe my painting is highly informed by these variations in sites and I use this pairing as an admission to transcend tourism, explore citizenship, and most importantly, engage the community. By beginning a dialogue with people and places I hope to pass authorship of my work on to the community and be a catalyst for civic pride.

My paintings reflect a deep interest in storytelling and the narrative power of images to reactivate a variety of spaces. Through a culmination of portraiture, ecology, and the creative use of urban spaces I hope to create allegories that can tell the untold. Or at least unravel it a bit.

Past works have included making a 40 acre ground drawing in the USA, creating a body of work while bicycling from Portugal to the exhibition gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark , becoming the de facto resident Artist of Lassen County Jail while serving time for graffiti, and seeking out decommissioned spaces for wheat pastes. Throughout that time I have continually returned to the inspiration of geography and identifying a sense of place.

Once it was my goal to bring art from the pedestal to the people. Now I just try to remember to take the oil bars out of my pockets before doing laundry. I am an American painter and geography is my muse."