Untitled
- Acrylic
- Dave Burton
The Summit County Courthouse rests stately and proud in Dave Burton’s acrylic painting. The Autumn day is vibrant with the early afternoon sun shining brightly on one side of the structure and throwing a lovely pattern of light and shadow across the building’s face. The bricks feel full, solid, the Courthouse in its prime. The colors of the composition are dominated by the contrasting brilliant orange of the changing leaves of the tree, and the deep, nearly cloudless ultramarine of the sky beyond. The architecture seems to bear a demeanor both accessible and unmovable, inviting and fair.
David Earl Burton was a renowned Utah-based illustrator and painter. Born in Salt Lake City in 1918, he grew up on Capitol Hill and spent most of his life in the Avenues. His talents as an artist/illustrator were recognized early in life, so much so that after being drafted into the U.S. Navy Burton was tapped to be a cartoonist in Washington, D.C., writing and illustrating the comic strip “Stalemate” for the Navy’s publication All Hands. His preferred medium was acrylic paint, which he would sometimes water down and use like watercolors. He liked to work quickly, and with acrylics he could sometimes finish a painting in a day or two. In addition to creating the fine art paintings such as those represented in the Summit County collection, Burton was a skilled professional commercial artist who had an uncanny ability to capture his subjects’ essence through caricature. He was an accomplished skier, fisherman, and golfer; a polymath who also had a passion for geology and paleontology. Dave Burton passed away in 2015. His vast body of work includes hundreds of fine art portraits, animals, illustrations, and landscapes, as well as cartoons.
- Current Location: Summit County Administration Building - 60 N Main St Coalville, UT 84017 (google map)
- Collections: Summit County Collection