Although Burroughs is more famous for writing such mind-expanding classics of Beat literature as Naked Lunch, The Wild Boys, The Soft Machine and Cities Of The Red Night, few people are aware that the author was also an enthusiastic practitioner of fine art. For Burroughs, painting overlapped into writing and, although the two media were worlds apart, opened up new paths of inner discovery for him to explore. "Very often they turn out to be illustrative of my writing," he wrote, "or what I am thinking about writing. So whatever I'm working on in writing will be reflected in painting."

Burroughs's art began in 1982 with his celebrated 'Shotgun Paintings', a series of plywood panels which the artist blasted with his newly acquired double-barrel Rossi 12-gauge shotgun.