The Burt Tarot
The Burt Tarot Cards come with a “key” booklet that describes the meaning behind each card. As a vehicle for exploring your thoughts, the odd juxtapositions provided in The Burt Tarot may jumpstart your own imaginative musings. In approaching this deck, let the images speak first; try not to use words. Our written language has not prepared us for the challenges and crises of our current world. In fact, language has been used to cleverly obscure the very real and pressing issues of our time. We must learn to use our imaginations again — Now is the time to wake from our fever dream and work instead on repairing the fragile but resilient bonds with our mother earth.
The Burt Tarot was begun in August of 2022 and completed in May of 2024. The works were executed on Arches Cover 90lb. Hot Press with Pelikan Fountain Pens in sepia and black Monteverde inks with Olivine green ink on the verso design.
To my parents William Austin Burt and Barbara Jean Woolley Burt- for teaching me to dream,
and Cathleen Miller without whose support this project would not have been possible.
Graphic Design by Tilman Reitzle, who understood and anticipated what I was looking for.
In my research for drawing this deck, I utilized a number of sources as inspiration: the wonderful Motherpeace Tarot Deck created by Vicki Noble and Karen Vogel, Catherine Perry Hargrave’s A History of Playing Cards and The Golden Game by Stanislas Klossowski de Rola. My methodology harkens back to Leonardo Da Vinci’s admonition ‘to rouse the mind to new inventions’ by looking at stained walls, clouds and the like. Like the Surrealists I have utilized unorthodox combinations and dream-like imagery to access and open the unconscious.
Meditation on images from the past is an essential element of my creativity in the present. The work I do exists in conversation with art of the Northern Renaissance, and also with my experiences as a child wandering the pine plains of South Florida and the woodlands of North Carolina. Later I lived in Tehran, Iran from 1976 through 1978 witnessing the revolution. This formative period in my life nurtured both an interest in the power of decorative form drawn from Islamic art and an abiding interest in the dynamics of conflict and cultures.
As an artist in training at RISD, I was introduced to the works of Albrecht Dürer whose fascinating use of line combined the stories and imagery of mythology and religion to express and give form to images of desire and conflict. Later, I found the works of Martin Schongauer transformative to my practice. Given these various influences, it seems only natural that I would eventually delve into the complex imagery of divination and games of chance.