Biography

Jason Burrell's upbringing on an island profoundly influenced perspective, honing his sensitivity to light, space, and the dynamic between individual and collective experiences. His educational journey includes Tabor Academy, Rhode Island School of Design, Salve Regina University, a junior year in Paris at Parson School of Design, and two Master of Fine Arts degrees from Savannah College of Art & Design and the University of Cincinnati. Prior work experiences as a landscape laborer, pressman, line cook, camp counselor, and book seller significantly shaped his character. Overcoming financial challenges through competitive exhibitions and awards, Burrell transitioned from a Graduate Teaching Assistant to a tenured position at Saint Mary University before joining UCF. With a diverse teaching portfolio, he has earned promotions to Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the School of Visual Arts & Design at UCF. After years of showing across the United States, he recently returned focus to his personal creative work.

Artist Statement

In front of us is industry -- the world that was built, with I-beams, iron, brick, cinder blocks, paper, glass, plexiglas, fiberglass, steel, rebar, plastic, disposability, calogen and silicone. This imposition of bureaucracy and policy over contact is the largest of nightmares and most tragic of fates. Drawing is the surrogate that leads to the transmutation of this vision.

Balancing oppositional forces is the energy of my artwork. The immediacy of black and white on paper can be one of the most informal means of communication; yet its precedence and pedigree has witnessed our construction from shopping lists, plumber advertisements, ransom notes and DaVinci doodles. The decaying factory is our reality. Its antithesis and correct response is hope and aspiration for the future. This dream occurs in the realm of the aesthetic. Finally haunting alienation is vanquished when the humanless, nameless, exclusively functional is transformed into an aesthetic experience.

Drawing is the open medium that alleviates the weight of the subject. It is the embodying of optimism. It overwhelms and evades the strict geometry of structure. The drawing is an escape from regimented severity to livelier hope; ugly places in a moment of beauty. The restricted palette and open brushwork renders calculated construction with the passion of a gesture, rigid structure revealed through light; linear perspective drawn with organic paint.

"Drawing -- the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing." - Coleridge