Colin Brant @ Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY - People of the Forest

Colin Brant: People of the Forest 
Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY 
February 10 – March 18, 2018

COLIN BRANT

Owl #3, 2016  

Oil on canvas, 20 x 36 inches

Courtesy the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson

When is the familiar unfamiliar? Colin Brant’s paintings of landscapes, birds and animals register with recognition, but unfold through improvisation and memory.

The mystic concentration of Nabis like Bonnard is inflected with the joy and color of the Fauves. With jungle cats and unblinking owls, the specter of the Douanier Rousseau lurks nearby. Landscape is refracted for effects both empathic and naïve, distant and interior. The tension between passages of loose-limbed brushwork and precisely calculated color harmonies, even a carefully detailed bird in a forest of blurs and veils, induces the dreamlike focus of a slow-motion nature documentary. 

In these realms of foliage and camouflage, a space is built with paint for a journey of discovery and delight.

COLIN BRANT (born 1965) received a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1987 and an MFA from The University of Iowa in 1995. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting in 2002 and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1998. He lives and works in North Bennington, Vermont.

JEFF BAILEY GALLERY
127 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
www.baileygallery.com

Colin Brant, Adam Baumgold Gallery, NYC - The Garden of the World (And Getting There)

Colin Brant

The Garden of the World (And Getting There)

Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York

October 18 — November 24, 2001

Adam Baumgold Gallery presents the first New York solo exhibition by Colin Brant of paintings "The Garden of the World (And Getting There)." These idiosyncratic oil paintings, relating to the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the American landscape, show a vision of a world that seems impractically optimistic and idealistic.

In his catalog essay for the exhibition, Charles Taliaferro (1) writes: "Colin Brant's work is informed by the idealized landscapes of early American folk painting. He captures the simple, vernacular coherence and eccentricities of the tradition, especially with his use of perspective, the scenes within scenes, and the shifts in depth of field. There is a stillness to these paintings which invites reverie, an unhurried exploration of forests, fields, lakes, grottos, and mountains. As viewers, we share in the adventures of travelers as they journey and rest through these pastoral constructions. At the same time there are surprising interruptions in which these worlds are called into question. We are allowed to enjoy these Arcadian scenes but we are also cautioned against being over earnest. In "Edge of the Dark Forest," for example, humor prevails as deer potter about and a squirrel clings desperately to a tree - all under the watchful eye of a contented owl. The paintings raise questions gently; I do not see the work in terms of pure satire. The irony in Brant's work, if there is any, is romantic. It is at once dissembling and heartening, gently checking out enthusiasm for the genuine charm and enchantment of the worlds he brings to us."

"The American folk tradition produced work which was explicitly personal, highly interpretive, and sometimes driven by profound values. Brant does not advance an explicit moral text like the American primitive artist Edward Hicks who framed paintings with edifying verse. Even so, there is a tenderness and humanity in Brant's romantic irony which I read as non-utopian and in favor of personality. Walt Whitman wrote that 'the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.' The same might be said of one of Colin Brant's paintings."

Colin Brant lives and works in New York City. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in painting.

(1) Charles Taliaferro teaches aesthetics at St. Olaf College; his writing has been published in the British Journal of Aesthetics and elsewhere.

ADAM BAUMGOLD GALLERY

74 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10021

www.adambaumgoldgallery.com