When we make, we make our thinking visible, we sort out our ideas and philosophies, and they start to exist, and exist in the mind of others.
Celia Burbush
Celia’s paintings are the result of a wider work, and in many ways are the by-product of a practice that is concerned with engaging with communities and groups of people. Celia’s goal is to work democratically with a group of people on a project. For Celia this project becomes a group effort and she is a co-creator. Together, Celia and this group of non-artists collaborators will attempt to learn or understand something about themselves or their environment which may have been just out of reach previously.
John Stokes, Art Manager, Rheged, Cumbria
"Dreaming of Home is the extraordinary possibility to see your imagination visualised by a painter. I had long been dreaming of a space, a space that I shall probably never be able to fully afford to create, except, with the help of Celia, I now have it. I can't think of many other opportunities where someone listens to you intently and then uses their skills to portray what they have heard. You get to see yourself through the eyes of another. It's a rare and wonderful thing."
Joshua Sofaer, artist.
"Celia Burbush is a painter based in Keswick. She paints from a makeshift studio in her basement, work that is thriving with emotion and autobiography. Both Celia and her work embrace the chaos of everyday life and the magic in the simple things. She is passionate about working in educational contexts with groups with learning disabilities and mental health issues, and using art in a transformative way."
ANDfestival, 2017
"Burbush's work offers a means of setting down a remembered or imagined home, marking out a participant's thinking and imagining a particular time and place. Seeing representations of imaged homes creates opportunities to chart transformations to our imagined home.To invite someone to creatively imagine a home is to allow for and attend to an individual's imaginative work."
Stuart Andrews, Lead Lecturer and Researcher, Brunel University
Celia is currently making new work as a response to the new 'zoom' culture and technologies, exploring its effects on human behaviour as well as its formal potential as a space to meet and make art. She is working with film, paint, textiles, and performance.
This is linked to a longer term analysis of the community work she undertook between 2008-18, focusing on the nature of the environments she created.
For 2021, Celia is working with the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art on their Easter family activities, and also with the Kirkgate Centre, Cockermouth, on an inclusive arts-based research project.
She is also working on ongoing painting and sculpture commissions.
