TRAINED IN ARCHITECTURE, A MULTIFACETED ARTIST PRODUCED A BODY OF WILDLY EXPRESSIVE, BIOMORPHIC ABSTRACTIONS

by Edward M. Gómez

Ernest Burden, Jr. didn’t like the “Junior” part of his name and never used it, preferring to be called “Ernest Burden” or simply “Erni Burden.” His son, Ernest Burden III, who is also a talented artist, prefers to ditch the generational suffix in his name, too, and go by “Ernest.” Alas, for the sheer complexity of the Burden Ernests’ name game, not to mention for the somewhat unfathomable diversity of Ernest Junior’s artistic journey and prolific production in various fields and genres, the late artist merits some serious attention. Only now, thanks to his son’s efforts, are the scope and diversity of his achievements becoming known.

Ernest Burden, Jr. (or “Erni”) was born in 1934 and died recently, in 2022. His son, Ernest, who is based in Ossining, New York, a riverside town north of New York City, is a skilled draftsman and artist specializing in architectural subjects who has also created his own rich body of fantasy-architecture images. In the short period of time since his father’s death, he has been digging through the late artist’s legacy of artworks, photographs, writings, and personal papers, meticulously organizing the materials he has found to create a neatly organized, accessible archive that will be able to serve the purposes of researchers and art dealers who, in time, may begin handling various parts of an intriguing, multifaceted oeuvre.