Tulsa Burns Collage

I make impermanent paintings — raw documents of emotion, gesture, and decay. Working primarily on newsprint and salvaged cardboard, my pieces are not meant to last. They are alive now, and slowly disappearing. My materials are simple: acrylic, oil, pastel, graphite, ink. I paint like I’m remembering something, not inventing it. The surfaces buckle, wrinkle, breathe. I embrace fading, yellowing, and breakdown — my work finishes itself over time. Drawing influence from outsider art, ritual mark-making, and neo-expressionism, I create pieces that feel unearthed more than designed. Each painting is a fragment — a page from a larger invisible book. Language appears, then disappears. Some works speak; others only hum. I am not interested in perfection or permanence. I am interested in evidence — of motion, of thought, of rupture. These are quiet artifacts of a loud feeling.