Joseph Burrough


I am an oil painter living in Richmond, Virginia. I first picked up my brushes and began working in oils as a hobby at age 15 while growing up in the small town of Tappahannock, Virginia about an hour northeast of Richmond. I taught myself how to paint largely by reading “how to” books on drawing, painting, and by closely studying oil paintings in galleries and museums. All through high school, college and into my adult life, I painted whenever I could, taking only one “intermediate” painting course as an elective my senior year in college and, surprisingly, winning an award in the Jr./Sr. Art Exhibit.

After leaving a career in facilities management in 1993, I pursued my lifelong dream of painting full-time. Since then, I've had the privilege of studying under two internationally-known and award-winning artists, Jim Wilcox and Scott Burdick. My plein-air (open air, onsite) oil paintings of rural Virginia, the James River, the Tetons of Wyoming and the wind blown shores of the Outer Banks of North Carolina offer a balance to my more detailed, retrospective works of historical Richmond.