Exuberant oils and oil-collages by this young Canadian show a strong ability for the direct abstract pictorial image. In the most clearly realized works there is an expressionist geometry that bounces irregular versions of simple masses against the order of an implied grid structure to great dramatic effect. Landscapes of Love, and 1492 come off powerfully and in Face Off the scratchy forms suspended at the top of a regular field take on an urgent meaning that reads clearly and is charged with impending action. Taken as a group however, the paintings have an unconvincing diversity, a capricious change from style to style that seems to stem less from the urgency of “unique response to unique experience” than from a huge appetite to consume all the goodies in the contemporary smorgasbord of styles. Burton seems to rely too heavily on the device of “painting out” as a means of achieving surprising formal conclusions. When the surface is activated with drips and nervous shapes Burton steps in to save the day (like the U.S. Cavalry) disciplining the surface into roughly simple shapes by the use of an overall ground color. This is a standard means in the contemporary lexicon; hidden accidentals lurk just beneath the surface creating a tension that can galvanize the simpler shapes into action, but indiscriminate use makes the accidents predictable and somewhat toothless. Reservations aside, these are the works of an artist with talent. One who will emerge from his mannerisms intact with potent things to say and a strong way of saying them.
––Doug McClellan
