Trent Burleson was born in Charlotte, NC in 1952. He was selected to attend the North CarolinaGovernor's School in the summer 1969. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) with a Bachelor’s degree in Painting and received a Masters Degree in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he began teaching various painting and drawing classes. He served as the Chief Critic of the school's European Honors Program in Rome in 1984. His paintings have been widely exhibited and are part of many private, corporate, and public collections. A landscape painting by Professor Burleson was used as the cover for the great American writer Raymond Carver’s last book, “Where I am Calling From” in 1988. The art critic Edward Sozanski wrote of Burleson’s paintings “he’s able, through light and color, to transform the mundane into the exceptional.”

Academic research/areas of interest

The history, methods, materials, and techniques of Painting.

Fall 2018 Courses

• ILLUS-2012-02 Drawing I: Visualizing Space
• ILLUS-3224-01 Landscape Painting
• ILLUS-2024-01 Painting I: Color Perception and Expression

Spring 2019 Courses

• ILLUS-3782-01 Dragon Concept & Character Development, In 3-d Mixed Media
• ILLUS-2016-04 Drawing II: The Articulate Figure
• ILLUS-2028-05 Painting II: Observation and Imagination