Jeffrey Burke

JT ‘Jeff’ Burke is a former commercial photographer who created food images for advertising and editorial clients for 16 years. He then founded and operated a successful stock photo agency. Now he and his wife Lorraine create artworks at their Studio in southern California. Jeff manipulates various bits of old objects and snips of the real world to create new abstract landscapes and fantastic visions. His work is inspired by various modern and contemporary image styles and artists. Although this includes the Pop Surrealist movement so prevalent in Southern California, he believes that art should be beautiful, inspiring and uplifting; there is already too much brutality and fear in the real world.

About the Series “Beautiful Again” A work-in-progress series The 21st century world is filled with a consumer’s paradise of
disposable goods and objects. We swim in a sea of new and discarded mass-produced items. Cheap costume jewelry abounds. One sees many beautiful baubles and trinkets that start out shiny and new in a display window. They glitter and glisten and beckon to be worn. They adorn their owners and bring beauty into their lives. Much like the human circle of life, however, these things have their own product life cycle; they eventually succumb to wear and old age and finally end up discarded, forgotten or destroyed. I search for these discarded things at swap meets and yard sales and
repurpose them into new images of beauty and fantasy. Virtual recycling. Sort of an afterlife for the old lady’s broaches.