Richard Burton (b.1984) lives and works in London. He studied at the Royal College of Art (2019–21) and Slade School of Fine Art (2004–08). He is the recipient of the Abbey Fellowship in Painting, British School at Rome (2022).He thinks of painting as a form of world-building, connected to writers such as Philip K. Dick and David Foster Wallace. His imagery is fed by synthetic environments and the emotional distance they generate. There is an element of aspirational living, which he blends with traces of sci-fi to produce a kind of numb, restrained longing. For him the repetition of upholstered forms speaks to our constant seeking of comfort, and the impossibility of that need being wholly realised.