Welcome back to your fantastic imaginatorium. You as a kid with these amazing toys of the 1980′s and early 1990′s. From He-Man to Marvel Comics and back again with no lack of sense of the greatness of each piece of molded plastic. It was an early goal of mine to own several of these toys, and if I saw them at a garage sale, you bet your biffy I’d have no qualm with paying a few bucks for them. What artist/designer Robert Burden has done is take his god-given skill as a craftsman and a painter and translate the wonder that he once had as a child owning these toys (I’d have been majorly jealous) into unbelievably beautiful works of modern art. They’ve been brought back to their once-great splendor, and beyond!

Above:

Devensor Mundi
Oil on Canvas
132″ x 82″

A few words from the man himself about this new “Toybox” series of paintings that you see below and above:

My current paintings are epic “portraits” of the small action figures that I played with as a boy. I remember these figures as being magnificent. They represented power, beauty, morality, and they captured every aspect of my imagination. As a young adult, these toys are wonderfully nostalgic, but they’re no longer amazing to me. I want to depict the toys as fantastically as they had been in my younger self’s imagination. I want to renew my faded sense of awe.

As you can maybe see, almost all of these paintings are accompanied by the toy that inspired them. Many of the paintings are titled basically what the toy is/was titled, for example “LJN’s The Snowman of Hook Mountian (Thundercats, 1985)” – which is the blue monkey man you see below. Oh and I am totally the proud owner of that one. He’s got some amazing uppercut punch action.

I need to get that He-Man lion too, while we’re on the subject. I remember several of my pals had that one. Cripes! Just for that, this post is in the World Famous Design Junkies toys category. Own the most!