Keith Burt
Keith Burt gives everyday objects a stark presence in his still life paintings, and his portraits possess an uncanny sense of the subject, driven by interrogation of the face. He said, “I build form by studying faces. In a portrait you are looking for something intangible. When it is successful it is hard to explain why. It is magical when you feel the weight of the person in a layer of painting chemicals.”
Burt moved to Brisbane from Melbourne in 2008, and painting helped him come to terms with a new home and landscape. To the ring of hills that surrounds the city, he adds cumulus clouds as the dominant feature – struck by the setting sun as shadows encroach on the sky. His process is singular and oil paint is applied “as it is, without turps or oil. If I get it right a painting is constructed with every brushstroke. That is when I feel happiest. I don’t layer much.”
In 2024 Burt was invited to undertake a month-long residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence at Tweed Regional Gallery. The resulting body of work was shown in ‘A Dictionary for painting: Margaret Olley, Robert Malherbe and Keith Burt’ at the gallery. In 2024 his work was curated into ‘Rearranged: Art of the Flower’ at Museum of Brisbane, with several works acquired for their collection.
Burt won the Brisbane Portrait Prize in 2020. He is a five-time Archibald Prize finalist (2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023), Wynne Prize finalist (2023) and his work was featured in the publication Still Life by Amber Creswell Bell (Thames & Hudson, 2021).
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