Goo Goo Dolls Mural, 2019
Philip Burke
American Born
CURRENTLY ON VIEW
Location: 1212 Hertel Avenue (Get Directions)
In the Spring of 1983, after living for 5 1/2 years in the West Village in Manhattan, Philip Burke had established a reputation as a young daring caricaturist with a strong bite. Due to an exclusive contract with the newly reborn VANITY FAIR magazine, Philip suddenly had the freedom and funds to start painting and flee from the city – just as the punks stopped screaming. Although he never expected to return home to Buffalo when the time came to leave NY, Philip had fallen in love with a woman here who introduced him to the practice of the true Buddhism of Nichiren Shoshu, and she was not about to leave.
Once back here, Philip saw the beauty and felt the warmth in Buffalo that he had missed before leaving for NY.
Philip continued his illustration career from here over the past several decades, working gigs for VANITY FAIR, VOGUE, ROLLING STONE, THE NEW YORKER, GQ, TIME, SLATE, TALK, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, and THE NEW YORK TIMES as well as freelance assignments for every major magazine and hundreds of smaller publications. During which Philip often dreamt of one day painting murals here.
So he was excited when, 11 months ago, Rory Allen of ZOOM Copy approached him about painting this wall at 1212 Hertel. Rory and his backers, David Rust and Joel Feroleto had agreed that the subject should be the Goo Goo Dolls. This felt a bit like destiny, since Robby and Philip became good friends when he invited me into MiA in 2015. However, when Rory showed Philip a picture of the wall he would cover – peppered with windows and doors – Philip felt pretty sure it would be impossible. After sleeping on it for one night, though, he realized that his 40 year career in editorial illustration perfectly prepared him to work with such challenging restrictions. The design became an exciting puzzle to solve.
In today’s rapid and radical technological shift, as artists are being forced to recreate their careers, Philip Burke is happy to become a part of this burgeoning new publishing platform.
To see more of my work, please go to philipburke.com