Brendan Stuart Burns was born in 1963; he currently lives and works in Cardiff. He studied Fine Art at Cardiff College of Art (1981 – 1985), and undertook a postgraduate in painting at The Slade School of Art, University College London (1985 – 1987). He won the Gold Medal in Fine Art at The National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1993 and 1998, and Welsh Artist of the Year in 2000 and 2003. His work is held in numerous private and public collections including The National Museum & Galleries of Wales (Derek Williams Trust), The Contemporary Art Society of Wales, A Fundacion Casa Museo ‘A Solaina’ de Pilono, Spain, The University of Glamorgan and Contemporary Art Society of Britain (Tom Bendhem Bequest). He has just completed an Artist in Residence at Oriel y Parc, Landscape Gallery St Davids, a partnership between the National Park & National Museum Wales. This body of new work was exhibited alongside works selected from the National Museums Collection, which have influenced Burns’ career to date.

Artist statement 2011
My work, both past and present, is underpinned by the central themes of absence, isolation, mortality and the spiritual. It is the balance between paint, process and subject matter that has maintained my visual language and its development through what on the surface may seem to have been differing themes. I am grappling with the concept of hæcceity, inscape, thing-ness, essence and the ontological in the way I see a stone, rock-pool or lichen growth. The challenge is then using paint and charcoal to communicate this experience to the viewer as well as incorporating my own refractions of self, identity and awareness of mortality and the spiritual.