This past year was a remarkable one for South Pasadena artist J.T. Burke. Within the year, Burke sold 30 pieces of his photo-based art during his first solo shows in Barcelona, Spain; Bristol, England; and Santa Barbara.

"At 53, I'm still an emerging artist," said Burke. "So much art is based on the name of the artist. It was very heartening to have people react to the work so well and to have them purchase it from someone they didn't know and just based on the visual qualities of the work."

A South Pas resident for 22 years, Burke raised his family here, ran a successful commercial photography business on Pasadena Avenue and Fair Oaks Avenue, and became a board member on the Chamber of Commerce. Finally, in 2006 Burke knew it was time to pick up his blank easel, or rather, blank screen to peruse 30,000 images in his database to work with composites and pursue art full time.

Perpetuating the Myth of Paradise is his first series, one he's worked on for two years. It involves photographing individual costume jewelry against a white backdrop in his 6,000-square-foot BurkeTriolo Studio (formerly a Trader Joe's) and then manipulating each digital image to make what he calls "remanufactured utopia," or otherwise fantastical scenes that represent the concept of paradise. Why costume jewelry?

"Paradise is a man-made idea of afterlife and beauty," according to Burke. "And costume jewelry is another version of man-made beauty, so I used those elements to compose a concept of man-made beauty, which is paradise."

Beauty indeed. Burke's work practically glistens off the 24 x 36 frames and, at first glance, it's hard to tell if the prismatic composition is a painting or photography. "I try to put a painterly aesthetic to it," said Burke, who sees his work as a combination between photographers capturing an image and painters creating one.

Burke's inspiration comes in the form of little baubles, pendants and odd, ornamental creatures he scours for in local swap meets, flea markets and shops such as Hodgson's Antiques. Anything from tigers with green emerald eyes, silver and gold bulldogs, bees, koi fish to a scarecrow might serve as his focal point in pieces like Little Bee Travels to the Beautiful Bright Glow, Evil Boy and His Minions and Little Pig Considers the Beautiful Gibberish. And Burke's mystical, dreamlike designs are endless, with pieces being used over again. Everything is endlessly reproducible, he noted.

Burke wants to impress upon beauty and paradise rather than focus on misery and bad things. "There's an art phrase, 'memento mori' [remember your mortality], but we don't need any more remembrance of the concept of our limited time on Earth," he said, and added that many artists use death and pain to promote change or make a statement. "The world does not need any more skulls; I like to celebrate life, happiness and beauty—that's really what it's about."

Burke is planning his first show in New York City, where he'll have 50 linear feet of wall space. He's also hoping to hire an art dealer in the coming year. He has started experimenting with creating wallpaper murals with his work and recently did a 30-foot entry hall for a Santa Barbara home.

"It makes the work a fully immersive experience on multiple floor-to-ceiling walls, you see all the high resolution details," he said. "I think the work looks much more powerful that way so I'm working hard at doing more of those."

To view J.T. Burke's artwork, visit his online portfolio at www.jtburke.com or click on the images in the photo box above.