Notism concerns the inevitable loss of personal human histories,

and our urgent attempt to preserve rapidly blurring memories through intimate, hand-written notes.

Burkhardt tracks our days as we wrestle with the inevitable loss over time of what we knew, and what we were: No sooner do we experience "Now" than that moment starts to recede.

This unique genre of contemporary American art fuses abstract semiotics and organic writing to record symbols, words and cultural artifacts even as they fade from our sight.

Burkhardt's obsessive assaults on blank space, imbued with his compulsive detail, depict a city-dweller’s incessant drive to harness the information overload of modern society. His intuitive work confers an ordered power on the daily chaos and confusion of our multi-tasking, computer-driven world.

Notism exalts, even as it obscures, the power of private thoughts expressed in hand-written text--its style, texture, intensity, range, dynamism, estheticism, depth, and the primal exuberance of documented memories.

These paintings and concepts also connote the eventual non-existence ("not-ism") of life as it drifts slowly into the distant black hole of the past. Even as our memories and achievements surround us with grace and aesthetic richness.

Burkhardt’s work documents the last vestiges of human writing and its attendant beauty. Its mysterious, spiritual qualities reveal symbolic shapes and forms while exploring the common chord in us all--a bond Burkhardt manifests in mixed media, acrylics, oil, and pen and ink on paper, canvas, or installations using refrigerator doors and computers that form potent "anti-tech" statements.

Working in his idiosyncratic system of "notes as substrate" ideation for over three decades, this Notist's art is at once primitive and evolved. The spontaneous, highly-charged images are a testament to the complexity, speed and intensity of modern urban life, with its disparate pulls on one’s soul.


Burkhardt Breaks Through

(A Review by Palm Beach Author, Critic and Curator Bruce Helander. 2009.)


One Man's Babel: The NOTISM of Ron Burkhardt.
(A Review by Los Angeles Art Critic & Curator Peter Frank. 2007.)


"Burkhardt Discovers There's Art in Taking Notes."
(A Review by Dr. Roberta Carasso, Elected Member/International Art Critics Association. 2005.)





Artist Video Statement