As a native of Marietta, Georgia, Richard Sellers Burgener considered himself an artist at a very young age. Inspired by Arthurian Myth and the atmosphere of Poe, a vision began to form that would mature into images of majestic beauty seen through a darker glass.
Receiving a degree in sculpture from Kennesaw State University, Burgener has explored Raku ceramics, fantasy illustration, fiction writing, and abstract painting. In 2008 all of these separate influences combined into a new and original form of bas relief painting full of texture, dark magic and wonder. To supplement these acrylic dreamscapes, he later crafted a line of jewelry; wearable artifacts from his strange and alluring world.
He currently resides in Avondale Estates, Georgia.
"Every culture has some concept of The Underworld. It is the metaphor for the human unconscious, that place where dreams are spawned and fears run down to pool and collect in dark chambers. There are monsters here, as well as treasures that fell through the cracks, forgotten, waiting to be found. Artists such as Goya, Munch, and Kirchner have explored this place in their work and have given the world a vision quite apart from the experience of mundane reality."
"The main objective of my work is to impart to my viewers a feeling of strangeness, a glimpse of alien beauty that is at once repulsive and alluring, comforting and disconcerting. I believe these contradictions to be the heart and soul of the true artistic experience."