Diane Burko

Diane Burko’s work in painting, photography, and time-based media considers the marks that human conversations make on the landscape. A Professor Emerita of the Community College of Philadelphia with additional teaching experience at Princeton University, Burko has received multiple grants from the NEA, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the Leeway Foundation and the Independence Foundation. She has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.
After focusing for several decades on monumental geological formations and waterways through landscape painting, Burko has shifted in the past 20 years to analyze the impact of industrial and colonial activity on those same landscapes. Burko’s practice seeks to visually emulsify interconnected subjects– extraction, deforestation, extinction, environmental justice, indigenous genocide, ecological degradation, climate collapse– so viewers might feel their connection viscerally through the beauty of her work. While her work deals with impending climate catastrophe, rather than lingering in dystopia, it celebrates the sublimity of the landscape by honoring the intricate geological and political webs that shape the identity of a place.
Burko has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, including shows at London’s Royal Academy of Art, Minneapolis Art Institute, National Academy of Sciences, Phillips Collection, RISD Museum Tang Museum, Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, and the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. She has been awarded residencies in Giverny, Bellagio, the Arctic Circle, and the Amazon Rainforest. In 2021, her solo exhibition Seeing Climate Change at the American University Museum was cited in the New York Times as one of the best shows of 2021. Her most recent solo show, Diane Burko: Bearing Witness, open January 31 to March 8, 2025 at Cristin Tierney Gallery was her first solo exhibition in New York in over 40 years.
Throughout her practice, Burko especially cherishes her collaborations with researchers in the sciences. She learns the most from “bearing witness” to the land.
Diane Burko Summer Heat 1 & 2 2020 Mixed Media on Canvas, 84 x 162 in. overall. Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery. Photo by Adam Reich.
Diane Burko Amazon 34 2024 Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery. Photo by Adam Reich.
Diane Burko Unprecedented Study 1 2021 Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery. Photo by Adam Reich.