About the Artist
Xanthe Burdett (born 1995, Devon) is an oil painter whose work layers figures and overlapping organic forms. Occasionally lifting figures straight out of historical works, the finely rendered paintings combine classical subjects with vivid colour and layers of natural forms, existing in conversation with those Old Masters who painted the female nude. Layers of transparent paint build a network of tangled plants and figures emerge from the thicket to join a long line of nude depictions of the feminine body in art. Modern interpretations of classical subjects, they occupy an uneasy space - beyond titillation but vulnerable in their nakedness. They are wary of our gaze.
View Xanthe's WorkWhen did you begin doing art? How did you get into it?
I mean, the very beginning is probably when I was little, we had a friend who was a painter, and she ran her painting classes, like at our house. So I grew up in quite like a funny, commune vibe... it was all very hippie. So there was this like watercolor painting class at our house every week that I could just go to for free. So I think probably, yeah, that was the very start. So I must have been five--tiny!
How did you transition from that to deciding to do it professionally?
So I was really into art at school and really wanted to be an artist, but I didn't come from like, a community or background related to that--apart from actually that that art teacher, but she also had a number of jobs, she was also a therapist. So I didn't see anyone kind of being an artist. So the transition was I kind of went to an art foundation. I found it really annoying, because they really didn't like figurative painting, really kind of weren't into what I wanted to do at all. Then I did an academic degree. And when I graduated, I was just like, oh, man, I definitely just want to do art. But yeah, I would say the main kind of trigger from like, really taking it seriously was during COVID, which was quite interesting. I just, I was kind of working this full time job that I really wasn't loving. And I just thought, I've got some savings, and the world is on fire. So I'm just gonna do it and see how it goes.
Why do you make art?
That's a good question. Um, I think the thing that keeps bringing me back to it, because it can be really frustrating sometimes, and it's a super weird job... But the thing that always brings you back is I think when I'm painting and making things, it's the time in which I'm most in that like, flow state, and my brain just exists in a different way. And I really just enjoy that feeling. And there's something that always brings me back. And then I think for me as well... I guess because I'm a figurative painter, and I like to paint things that look kind of, like, have a link to reality. There's an element of just like, always wanting to improve on what I've created. So that really keeps me going. Like, yeah, I always feel like what I'm trying to make is just average.
What's your creative process like?
I think I feel like because I haven't done any traditional training so much, it's always changing. So I feel like I've been on this kind of like journey. Yeah, things have been changing a lot recently. And also I'm about to go and do a Masters so I imagine they'll change even more. But I would say it like ideas for paintings usually just arrived in my head reasonably fully formed. I'll just have like a flash of an image, and then I'll write it down, or I've tried to get more into sketching recently, and kind of draw things. So I yeah, I'll have like a kind of a flashing, something I want to make, and then I'll try and start drawing. I'll try and draw just from my mind. So sometimes my fingers look a bit crazy. And then I would say, I kind of start trying to find references that are similar to the bodies I'm wanting to make. Or I take photographs, or a lot recently, I've been kind of taking figures from historical paintings. I have figures in those paintings... there's something about the like, form, that I'm like, well, I'm gonna take that figure. And then I start painting and then everything usually goes different. Yeah, I tend I don't tend to draw things out, I tend to just go straight in with paint. And I'll spend quite a bit of time moving things. I try and like really spend time on the like drawing stage and mapping things out. But then I always rush it. And then I always have to like, correct things for so long.
Has this process evolved over time?
Yeah, I definitely used to spend a lot... I used to draw on the canvas first with like pencil, and I spend a lot of time, like adjusting things. And then sometimes I would like overlay the photograph and the drawing so far, and try and see, which is a really useful way of like learning to develop your drawing, and like, adjust things like that. But I feel like the longer I've been doing it, the more I push myself to just go straight in. Although sometimes it goes really wrong. But there was like, I did one or two paintings, I think when I did a grid, and I drew out like that, but then I just, I felt like it was a little... a little restrictive. And I also didn't want to be like, completely realist. I didn't feel like I had to be exact the image. But yeah, so I felt like there was a bit more freedom and a bit more of yourself in it.
What has inspired your work? It sounds like ideas just come to you?
Yeah, I think ideas come to me, I think, I have always been interested in just painting faces, and it was really portraits to start with. And now it's kind of more complicated figures, and figures that interact. So that was just always there. I think when I was doing, like, GCSE, which is, I don't know, you're like, maybe 14, 15. I was always wanting to paint portraits of not just and then... I grew up really in the countryside. And so there's a lot about landscape and wild patterns and growth that I'm really trying to bring into my work now. And then also just like loads of artists, I think I find so much inspiration from just finding other work that just is exciting and there's something about it, I can't quite work out why I like it, or how they've done it, which is always very annoying. Yeah, so like, at the start, I was really into kind of really traditional portrait painters, like, really loved Rembrandt and when I was young, and I was really into portraits. I still love Rembrandt, but now there's artists like Colleen Berry... I think like figurative painters who are doing stuff that's quite exciting with like, color and quite exciting with figures. I really, yeah, I feel like seeing something really fresh. Then my mind starts to populate with ideas.
Do you feel like most of your inspiration comes from you internally or from the external world?
I think it's probably like the majority comes from like, internally, in more that I'm just really drawing on like my experience my life and memories. Although I'm not like someone who necessarily uses my memories as inspiration. But I think they always find a way in, especially as I've got older and I've moved away from like, just faces and I wanted more narratives and stories. And then Outside... What goes well, sometimes I'll just like see, I don't know, I'll see like someone's face in a particular light or I'll see a particular face. And I'd be very inspired by that. Someone moving in particular way. Yeah.
How did you come to find your personal art style?
I think there was one painting I did. I started, I was making sketchbooks for something that I wanted to submit to this program, that I didn't end up getting into actually... it was years ago. But I was making these sketchbooks and I was trying to fill them up really quickly. And I was doing it outside. And then I started to draw around loads of like shadow shapes, there were loads of plants... I'd start to draw around them. So that was the start of everything. So they got really into these like, kind of intricate but slightly distorted organic forms by drawing around the shadows and painting them. And then I did one little circular panel, where I overlapped them, and then I painted a face within it. And I think as soon as I did that one, I was like, Oh, this is how I want to paint. And then that must have been like maybe two years ago that that first happened, that like overlapping forms and faces. And then I've just been like trying to keep doing that and trying that technique. I've been trying loads of new stuff recently. And it's all been going disastrously... But I think that experimenting... sometimes you're like, Wow, it's amazing. And sometimes it's not working. And because I think I'm just always trying to find ways to like, make those two things exist, I'm working with lots of thin layers. I don't know sometimes I'm like, I feel like I'm over complicating it, but it is complicated with all the layers.
How do you deal with wanting to experiment but also feeling like you have to post consistent content on social media?
I just haven't been posting recently, which is quite nice. I think there was a time when I was posting loads and Instagram was like, really just showing my account on the Explore page. And I think it's just because of posting really regularly, but it was also what I was doing. And then I just for a while I was like I just need to not post. It's super useful, but it's like, it can be frustrating. I think it takes hours of time. So I'm just having a nice like, no pressure. Not trying to make work to put it online.
What has doing art professionally been like?
It's, um it's really chaotic. I really enjoy it. I do probably get maybe, on average, half my time in the studio painting. But I do loads of like... so all my jobs are in art, but I do a lot of like, arts facilitations. I work freelance, and I work a lot in like Arts and Health spaces with groups that might really benefit from doing art. So that's like, I have more regular employment. I think one of the reasons... well, there's lots of reasons to do this masters, but one of them is that like... the art world... it definitely, in London, it can be very hard to enter unless you know people or have quite a good institutional 'in,' like a name. So yeah, it's been great in that like, what I've made... the way I've been doing it up until this point is just submitting work, to like every open call and exhibition I find. But the gallery world... I'm still like, I don't know! Yeah, so I do lots of different jobs, but it's really fun. The other thing is I have a spare room in the floor I live in so I paint in there, I don't rent a studio, which is great in terms of costs, but it can be a little lonely. So I think that's something... it's a lot of time by yourself unless you're in a shared studio. So I think I'm gonna really love being in a shared studio.
Do you have any advice for art students?
Oooh... I've never... Well, I have been an art student on this foundation, but I didn't think I was a very good art student, then. I think you just have to, like, be really self motivated with art. There has to be a reason you're doing it. And even if you can't articulate what that is at all, that's fine. And I think another good thing is like, the kind of art you are going to make will just happen. So try not to like, tear yourself apart being like, 'what kind of artist am I?' Like, just keep making stuff. And when it's right, you'll be like, oh, yeah, this is cool. But yeah, maybe I'll have better advice when I've been an art student!