Richard Burton
The work of
- ArtistRichard Burton
SALLY TRIER I’m really into the way he works with color. The monochrome surfaces have all these nuances, shadows and transitions that give the image so much depth. I love how he can make a single color feel rich and varied just by playing with tone. And then there’s this mystique with the figures and spaces that feel so strangely solitary.
About Richard Burton
Born in 1984, London-based artist Richard Burton has built a practice that drifts between the familiar and the uncanny, exploring the quiet moments of transit and solitude that often go unnoticed. A graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art (2008) and the Royal College of Art (2021), Burton’s career has already been marked by significant recognition, including the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2021), and the Abbey Fellowship in Painting at the British School in Rome (2022).
Burton’s work is distinguished by his sensitive handling of oil paint - applied in translucent, almost watercolour-like layers - on surfaces that he often primes with sand to create fresco-like textures. The results are dreamlike compositions that blur the boundary between interior and exterior, presence and absence. His subdued palette of pale greens, violets, pinks, and greys conveys both softness and disquiet, conjuring a sense of stillness that feels at once intimate and estranging.
Recurring motifs in his paintings include upholstered seating, empty train compartments, aeroplane cabins, and car interiors - spaces that suggest movement yet remain suspended in time. These settings, occasionally punctuated by solitary figures, highlight themes of isolation, longing, and emotional distance. In their banality, they echo the routines of modern travel, yet Burton transforms them into meditations on memory and the uncanny.
Represented by Solo Contemporary, Burton has exhibited widely, with group shows across London, New York, Geneva, and Madrid, as well as appearances at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 2016 and 2019. Critics have noted his ability to extract poetry from the overlooked details of everyday life, creating images that linger somewhere between retro-futuristic nostalgia and quiet psychological study.
In Burton’s paintings, the viewer is drawn into the in-between: the moments of waiting, moving, and pausing that punctuate contemporary existence. Through subtle colour shifts and restrained imagery, he captures the haunting beauty of life’s transitory spaces, giving voice to the emotions that reside in silence.
