TAURUS BURNS
In our "Get to Know" series, we’re bringing you closer to the artists shaping the Detroit contemporary landscape. Stay tuned as we spotlight incredible artists—one story at a time
Photo by CJ Benninger
“The shadows of my childhood followed me everywhere. Art helped me step into the light”
Shadows & Light: The Journey of an Artist
What was your childhood like?
Disruption was a constant in my life. My parents—an interracial couple—got married just seven years after it became legal for them to do so in the U.S. In rural Michigan, that was still taboo. My dad joined the Army, partly to escape that, partly for the promise of something bigger. We moved a lot. Then they divorced, and I kept moving. My childhood was shaped by that instability, by constant shifts in environment, by learning to adapt over and over again.
Black Like Me, 2024
When did art become important to you?
Early on. It was the one thing that always felt like mine. In my family, we didn’t talk about feelings. Mental health wasn’t a real thing—it was just life, and you got through it. I learned not to talk about family business with anyone. But I could draw it. I could sketch what I was feeling without saying a word. It was my way of taking back power in a life that often felt out of my control.
Young, Patriotic and Black, 2021
The Panther in Me, II, 2021
Was there a moment when you knew you wanted to be an artist?
Yeah. 1997. I was 23, taking a figure drawing class with the late John Onye Lockard at Washtenaw Community College. I had never been to an art museum before. He sent us to the University of Michigan Museum of Art to draw, and that moment changed everything. Standing in that space, surrounded by centuries of artistic expression, it all just… clicked. My life made sense in a way it never had before. I knew this was what I had to do.
An Inclusive Self Portrait, 2023
My Fellow Americans, 2022
How did you pursue that path?
I moved to Detroit in 1998 and enrolled in the Fine Arts program at CCS. I wanted to be a figure painter. Not just any figure painter—I wanted to be one of the best. I studied artists like David Park, Philip Guston, Bob Thompson, Kerry James Marshall, Trenton Doyle Hancock. Their work felt raw and deeply personal, unafraid to confront reality. That’s what I wanted: to make paintings that were honest, that reflected the challenge of living in this world. I’ve been working toward that ever since.
Yellow Submarine, 1999
Jingo, 2022
The Graduate, 2021
How has your work evolved over time?
For a long time, I took a more traditional approach—urban landscapes, self-portraits, paintings of friends or models. I was refining my craft, but I wasn’t facing myself. I had spent years avoiding what had led me to art in the first place: my own experience. Eventually, I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
I was a sensitive kid. I felt everything—especially when people I cared about were hurting or being hurtful. Eventually, I learned to push that sensitivity down, to cast it into the shadows. But it never left me. It just waited.
Touched, 2018
You Don’t Know the Half, 2023
People say your studio is surprisingly clean and organized. Why is that?
Probably because everything in my head is the opposite. My dad was military, so discipline and order were big in our household. That stuck with me. My adult life has been messy, but I was raised to be responsible, to respect authority, to hold things together. My studio reflects that structure. But my art—that’s where the disorder lives. That’s where the real work happens.
Inclusion Fever, 2024
The Hunt For Equality, 2021
What does art mean to you now?
It’s my way back to myself. My sketchbooks have always been a refuge, a place where I could express what I didn’t have words for. Through art, I’ve been able to unpack my past, confront the things I tried to bury, and make sense of the chaos. It’s not just an escape. It’s a reckoning.
This journey has never been easy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The shadows of my childhood followed me everywhere. Art helped me step into the light
The Most Inclusive Show on Earth, 2025