Richard Burton

I think of painting as a form of world-building, connected to writers such as Philip K. Dick and David Foster Wallace. My imagery is fed by synthetic environments and the emotional distance they generate. There is an element of aspirational living, which I blend with traces of sci-fi to produce a kind of numb, restrained longing. For me the repetition of upholstered forms speaks to our constant seeking of comfort, and the impossibility of that need being wholly realised.

In the act of image-making I feel that you only ever have the illusion of full control. Like a neurotic symptom, some sensations always persist — you obsess over them, despite yourself and your efforts to block them out; how you use paint to establish and fetishize these forms reveals something about the way you process lived experience, uncovering unique combinations of excitement and dread.