When artists Lynn and Richard D. Burton get together, whether in person, telephone or internet, they talk art. Their conversations are often detailed, no matter how brief.

Lynn often reminds Richard that art is study, understanding, and action. “I can assure you, that when it comes to the overall understanding of art, I probably should have a doctor’s degree,” he repeats over and over. He believes it. He got the only degree he ever received from studying at the university of hard knocks, beginning his career as a self employed sign painter at the age of nineteen. As far as art, he began private lessons from famous artist, Roderick Mead, at the age of fourteen and has never stopped taking lessons from someone he believes can help him. “If I find someone who can do something I can’t, I find a way to take lessons from them,” he says. He’s had a brush in his hands for more than half a century!

“I remember Lynn making good money ‘pin-striping’ and ‘flaming’ fellow teenagers ‘hot-rods’ back in the late 50s,” Richard adds.

Lynn insists that when he paints, he always has references for the subject. An example of this is the way he holds the flower up to his painting to the right.

“I have to feel it…the color, I mean,” he says. We’re not quite sure what he means, but we think we get it. He talks a lot about color, sometimes emotionally. “It’s the artist in him,” Richard says when talking about it. “I know the experience, I’ve felt it before, maybe not as seriously.”

“When I painted Adam and Eve, I had more leafy vegetables than you can imagine,” Lynn explains, “of course I had the apple. I don’t know how many I went through, but it was necessary. But to get the foliage, I used every thing I could find; cabbage, collard greens, spinach, bib lettuce, endive, regular lettuce, and I think I might have had a little poke salad…something I was nibbling on made me feel a little crazy…perhaps, a little ‘mean fisted’, especially when I couldn’t get the colors to work right.’

“I really agonized over this painting because I wanted to make a painting of a scene that has probably been painted more than any other over and over throughout history. However, I wanted mine to be something totally different.”