It’s Day 155 and today was one of those challenging painting days.  I’ll explain more later.  Today I realized that with my activities these days I’m either covered in paint or dirt!  All my seeds are growing for my garden!  I just need to set up a better area for an actual garden.  It’ll be fun to do.  Join me today in honoring James Brooks.  The least well known of the “well known” abstract painters of his time.

James Brooks (October 18, 1906 – March 9, 1992) was an American muralist, abstract painter and winner of the Logan Medal of the Arts. Brooks was a friend of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner on Eastern Long Island.

In 1947 he married artist Charlotte Park. Considered a first generation abstract

expressionist painter, Brooks was amongst the first abstract expressionists to use staining as an important technique.

According to art critic, Carter Ratcliff “His concern has always been to create painterly accidents of the kind that allow buried personal meanings to take on visibility.”

 

 

 

In his paintings from the late 1940s Brooks began to dilute his oil paint in order to stain the mostly raw canvas. These works often combined calligraphy and abstract shapes.

Brooks had his first one-man exhibition of his abstract expressionist paintings in 1949

at the Peridot Gallery in New York. The Courtauld Institute of Art (London), the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, Texas), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), the Harvard University Art Museums, the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis, Indiana), the Sheldon Art Gallery(Lincoln, Nebraska), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), the Tate Gallery (London) and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota) are among the public collections holding work by James Brooks.

Biography is from wikipedia.

I enjoyed doing today’s painting, but I’m getting to the point in my project where it’s beginning to get challenging to emulate abstract paintings!  Certain artist’s have a defined style…something that clearly (in every piece) shows their style whether it be entirely unique to

them or if it’s just certain colors they tend to use, etc.  Then there are painters like James Brooks.  It was hard for me to pin-point his exact style and technique and his style of painting has evolved and changed throughout his years of painting.  I decided to focus on a couple of his pieces and then do a painting of my own that was inspired from me just staring at his pieces and breaking them down in my head.  I still don’t know if my tribute captures his spirit or style, but I liked it in general.  I did use a staining technique on the piece before adding more layers!  I’ll let you be the judge.  I also told myself today that this was the whole point of this project…to pay tribute with your own pieces of art and it doesn’t matter if each piece is a success, but the fact that you did it at all with the right intentions!  And I definitely did it and it was for Mr. Brooks. 🙂

I hope you enjoy my piece and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 156.  Best, Linda