Daily Inspiration: Meet Pat DeVane Burns

Today we’d like to introduce you to Pat DeVane Burns.

Hi Pat, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My artwork has been collected over much of the US, with a few going to Europe and Australia. I started with multiple local awards in high school in my home state of Georgia, garnering a Governor’s Honors live-in program one summer at Wesleyan College, then entering Berry College on a full-tuition scholarship in art. I took time to raise a family and be active in my husband’s business while continuing to learn through occasional workshops, through artist peer groups, and by amassing a huge art library.

Moving over twenty-five times, I still managed to get artwork into the public eye. Now that the children are grown and I have retired from the family business, the last fifteen years have been spent exploring my passion with a backlog of ideas and images flowing into existence. Not only do I paint in acrylics and oils, but I also enjoy sculpting in clay, concrete, and wire… influenced by so many years in the construction industry…. concentrating on people and animals.

Since the fall of 2013, I have spent most of my creative energies sculpting in clay. It all started with the desire to make a bust of my mother, who died in a car wreck when she was 59. Over the years, I tried several times to paint her portrait but was emotionally unable to do so. I enrolled in an evening continuing education class with Dr. Marlin Adams working with water-based clay. This was the breakthrough that I needed! I find the hands-on contact with the clay absorbs my emotions, my feelings, and the relationships involved and allows me to translate them into 3D imagery.

I consider myself a conduit… a tool to be used to create something tangible from the intangible. Clay is so direct, so immediate, with no technical process to interrupt the transfer. It is the same today as thousands of years ago. There is a hard-to-describe connection that is felt when a sculpture hits that certain point when it “comes to life” for me. My desire is for the piece to communicate that special connection, creating an ongoing dialog, and bringing the viewer continuing enjoyment with the story represented.

In 2018, I started creating more sculptures that could be reproduced through bronze, bonded bronze, and resin to share them with more people. There are just a limited number of originals that I can do….. but my bucket list gets longer every day!

In late 2021, my heart was led into a Christian-based mentoring program called “Created to Thrive” by Matt Tommey. As I grow with God’s guidance, I feel my role as a conduit of His grace strengthened and expanding. I know God puts a unique design in each of us and only asks us to say “yes” to His assignments to fulfill our purpose. I’m so glad He gave me the gift of art!

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think we all have experienced obstacles and setbacks and I certainly am no exception! My first career was raising a family and being a helpmate in my husband’s commercial contracting business.

As a creative, every experience throughout this time added to the insights and story that I knew one day I would tell through my artwork, so I don’t consider it “lost time”. Moving so many times was probably my biggest challenge in those earlier years. There was no internet, so changing locations made it hard to establish a following. Time was also a scarce commodity! And it seems there was always something more pressing than art supplies to absorb the finances.

The first retail studio/gallery I opened was in a restored grain mill on the Ocmulgee River in Juliette, Georgia. Remember the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes”? That’s where it was filmed. It was a sweet location, until…. four days after opening, the Southeast was hit with a tropical storm that flooded the river, broke a dam, and rose 4 feet into my space. I, along with other merchants, tried to re-open but the tourist trade we counted on was suddenly gone.

Learning the computer and how to self-represent was another challenge, especially for a right-brained artist. It is STILL a challenge!

However, I believe I represent a great many women of my era who follow their passion later in life successfully. I went back to college after the age of 62 to learn some new skills. Claiming the time for myself was awkward at first, but I soon got over that. It was enlivening to stretch and grow under some talented instructors!

Another challenge is sometimes getting me out of my garden and into the studio, as I love digging in the dirt almost as much as sculpting with it!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My style is considered representational and sometimes impressionistic. Acrylics and oils are my main painting mediums. My favorite sculpting medium is water-based clay, such as terra-cotta, that is then fired and finished in paint or patina. My favorite subjects are animals and people, so I do a lot of commissions. A recent very meaningful one is a portrait of a fireman who lost his life to Covid. (picture)

The largest and most complicated sculpture I have created to date is a life-size man and his Labrador Retriever. It was created in oil clay and then cast in bonded bronze. It will be installed to dedicate a new dog park that is currently under construction.

The portrait bust I am most proud of is the one I made of my mother. When I presented it to my father, he studied it for a few moments then softly said, ” She is beckoning to me”. I am honored to have a wall full of ribbons in my studio. I just recently won Best of Show in the 2023 Georgia National Fair’s Open Professional Fine Art Competition.

My website has options for contacting me, following my story, and links to sites that create print-on-demand products of many of my paintings. I welcome visits and comments!

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I think most of my artwork would be considered fairly “serious” in nature, so it might surprise some people to know I have a quirky sense of humor. After several years of doing some rewarding commissions that were mostly memorials of people and pets, I had a break in my schedule right after Christmas 2022.

A friend who owns some goats suggested I do some whimsical goats. It kept popping up in my mind, so I played with the idea of doing some spoofs on the Old Masters using goats. I kept second-guessing myself as to what I would ultimately do with such paintings if I did them. So I prayed about it. I was led to do them as freely as I wanted and let God handle the results. So I painted five 16″ x 20″ spoofs. Three sold almost immediately and one of the remaining two won the Best of Show and a nice prize!

Friends wanted cards of them, so I now have an Etsy shop, PatBurnsArtCards, to share the smiles with folks who appreciate a quirky sense of humor. Poster prints are now on quite a few walls, too. God handled it all right! I plan to delve into more funsies. We all need some joy!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.patburnsart.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/patburnsart
• Facebook: facebook.com/patburnsart
• Other: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/pat-burns