“I’ve finally been able to connect my politics with my painting,” says Diane Burko GFA’69. “I mean, I was always a feminist, but I didn’t want to mimic Judy Chicago and paint vaginas.”
Burko can, however, paint the dramatic effects of global warming on glaciers to make a visual rather than a written statement. The Politics of Snow represents a dramatic departure for Burko. Her usual M.O. involves flying around the world in a small plane, shooting aerial views of topography to project onto canvas for reference. For this project she relied on small archival photographs to show the inexorable melting of glaciers in the United States and Peru.
“I want to seduce viewers with my painting of the landscape and then subtly engage them in contemplating its survival,” explains Burko. “Beauty and desolation, life and death all seem to be converging for me at this time as the concept of mortality—personally and globally—dominates my creative impulse.”
