Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Fine Art Vol 3 no 9

VL
Studio Visit JW Burke
The Lonesome Crowded West by Dave Justus
Some artists say they feel compelled to create, as if a
voice inside is driving them in their craft. But for J.W.
Burke, art was all about getting the voices to stop.
In 1988, Burke was eighteen years old, living in
Carmel, California and working maintenance for a
wealthy businessman. “I spent my days off roaming
the streets,” he recalls, “partly chasing girls, and partly
admiring the many incredible galleries.” But his wideopen
future would come crashing down at the hands
of a group of his peers.
“As a cruel prank, they poisoned me with a massive
LSD overdose,” he says. The drugging caused him to
suffer severe constant delusions, including both audio
and visual hallucinations, and to harbor paranoid
thoughts. “These mimicked the symptoms of paranoid
schizophrenia. I was unable to maintain my sanity.”
For years, Burke lived either on the streets, where
he got in trouble with the law, or in mental health
hospitals, where he struggled to regain his faculties.
“I lived filthy and homeless,” he says, “begging for
change and sleeping in a box. My delusions over the
years had convinced me that I was somehow being
controlled by, or tortured by, manmade voices.” The
sounds emanating from public television or radio were
a source of agonizing torment for him.
“In September of 1997,” he recalls, “my delusions
drove me to commit two acts of robbery, both without
bloodshed. I remember clearly how, upon my arrest,
as soon as I was handcuffed and placed in the police
car, my delusions stopped—dead quiet. No voices, no
hallucinations, no disorientation… just the sound of
the car and the static of the police radio.”
But the sudden silencing of a decade’s worth of noise
didn’t mean everything was fixed, or that Burke was
whole and healthy again. “The task of rebuilding my
sanity lay before me while I awoke to the fact that I
faced spending the remainder of my life in prison,” he
says. Fortunately, he had a tool for that rebuilding.
“When I was eleven,” Burke remembers, “my mother
bought me a sketchpad and charcoal pencils, saying,
‘Here, I think you are going to be an artist.’” He
had balked, and had grown up believing that art was
beyond his capabilities. But in prison, with time and
determination on his side, he took up his materials
and started to create.
“I began drawing in my cell to help stabilize, exercise,
and restructure my mind against relapse,” he says.
“Soon I asked myself, ‘What can you do to save yourself
What are your options’” Feeling that the prison
system gave him few ways to succeed, he faced
down his lengthy term and made his decision. “To
become an artist or a writer would allow me two ways
to strengthen my mind. One, to teach myself a career
that could lead to financial independence, and two, to
obtain possible assistance in regaining my freedom.”
Frustrated by the lengthy waiting list and selection
process for the prison’s “Craft Shop,” where inmates
have the opportunity to earn an income for their families
or themselves when they get out, Burke has found
what solace he can in his situation. “In my drawing
lessons over the years,” he says, “I slowly found that
any moment I wasn’t drawing was time wasted. My
work improved, and I learned that once I understood
how to achieve accuracy in drawing, I could create
anything, which meant all sorts of excitement and
pride of achievement.”
Now, Burke estimates, “I work at drawing ten to fourteen
hours a day, seven days per week. While I create
artwork on a variety of subject matter, I especially
enjoy creating extremely detailed Westerns depicting
ranch scenes, rodeo, or Old West themes.”
Perhaps not surprisingly for a man confined, Burke
speaks eloquently on the evocative, escapist qualities
of art. “I usually work in graphite or colored pencil,” he
notes. “The black and white of graphite has the ability
to transcend time, as well as create realistic textures
that work well together with the detail to make you almost
smell the leather, feel the heat of the day, or hear
the pounding of hooves.”
Right Page: Bandit
http://www.artbyjwburke.com/
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