By Jennifer Flowers

jenniferflowers@gannett.com

When things are a little off, Mark Burt is on.

And that's helpful to know when checking out the portfolio of this artist, who has pieced together an entire world of bizarre creatures and landscapes that coexist according to their own evolution patterns.

The Bossier City native, who works in a surrealist style, got his bachelor's degree in fine art from Texas A&M University""Commerce, formerly known as East Texas State University. Burt's textured, detailed pen-and-ink drawings and oil paintings are influenced heavily by Lee Baxter Davis, one of his art professors who was famous for starting The Lizard Cult in the 1970s.

Burt laid low over the past couple of years before exhibiting one work titled "Eyeusorias" at the May opening of coolspace, a gallery exhibiting local artists and performing artists downtown. The 31-year-old graphic artist works in the advertising department of The Times. Check out his work on the Northwest Louisiana Art Gallery Web site at www.nwlaartgallery.com.

QUESTION: How would you describe your style?

ANSWER: It's kind of surrealism, I guess "» I like things that are more than real. They're just twisted. They're not real, but just because they're surreal, there's a certain amount of honesty or truth to them.

Q: What did you learn under Lee Baxter Davis?

A: A lot of his students draw from the same universe. It's kind of a surreal, loose narrative art. My stuff's kind of my skew on evolution. So all my creatures kind of evolve. In my piece called "Eyeusorias," the surface of that Eyeusorias is constantly evolving. You've got all these pods going off in all these different directions, so they're changing and becoming something else.

Q: Why is it called Eyeusorias?

A: From dinosaur. Eyeusorias, eyesore. It can be a psychological self-portrait. All of my stuff's personal but it's not a literal thing. It's just eyesore, how you feel about yourself. Whoever can identify it, they see it and they can play with the words.

Q: What's the philosophy behind your work?

A: I want to maintain universality with my work. My creatures exist on different levels. I want everything to kind of look the same. You look at some artists and everything they do is different, and I want everything I do to be consistent. It's one world but things are different, and it changes. The more I do it, the better I get at it. I'm evolving as an artist, the creatures evolve and they change.

Q: Tell me about the world in your drawings and paintings.

A: The ideas eventually become completely abstract and less literal. I have three stages: I have the primordial ooze, they're more a landscape with spiky looking stuff, and then I have the assorted nut men, and those are the characters, the creatures. They kind of live in a literal place so you apply classical rules to how they exist. And then the next stage is the kind of spirit, or metaphysical stage. I'm just randomly coming up with shapes and forms and how they exist within their environment and what their rules are.

Q: What do you want people to get out of your work?

A: The response I want is kind of like a, "huh." It's not supposed to be a "broaden your mind" thing or anything like that. It's just kind of a casual acknowledgement of something that's off, basically.

Q: Do you have any other passions?

A: I ride motorcycles. I have a Harley. I inherited it from my dad. He was general manager of the Bossier Harley Davidson shop. I started riding after my dad died three years ago. I rode in the procession of his funeral, and after that I just kind of rode. But that's kind of phasing into art. I'm letting art be more important again, but I was pretty hardcore for a while.

Q: What measures success for you in the art world?

A: I don't want to compromise myself, basically. That's the main thing. I want to do what I want to do. It's not about compromising myself as an artist for a gallery or a buyer or whatever. I just want to do what I want to do. If they want to buy it, they want to buy it. If they don't, they don't.

Q: Why is it important to be honest with yourself?

A: I don't know. That's just how I am. I think it allows you to be in control of what you're making. I work in graphic design every day and that's different. You're doing things for your client and you're answering to them. With this, I'm not necessarily answering to anybody but myself.



Subscribe to The Times! Click here to start your subscription.