Brian Despain returns to the gallery with a new set of paintings from his 100 Robots series. While his painterly work retains a dark humor, these new paintings belie also a sense of melancholy, stemming from recent issues in the artists life. He places his depiction of the "everyman" as robot in bleak situations and landscapes that look ready to storm. Painted in hurricane-cloud greys and blues and sulphurous post-apocalyptic yellows, the robot "protagonists" blunder their way across tumultuous landscapes, thrilled by a newly discovered concept of “self” yet haunted with the dawning realization of their fatal disconnection from the life which surrounds them. Religion, as well as social and personal politics are depicted in allegorical terms, and Brian often uses a symbolic visual vocabulary within his image making.Each painting is meant to provoke introspection into one’s own existence and begs further examination of the collective human condition.
Please click on images to enlarge!
"The Water God"
oil on panel
16" x 20" image
21" x 25" framed
Sold
"They Talked Of Tin"
oil on panel
11" x 14" image
15" x 18" framed
Sold
"The Escape"
oil on panel
16" x 20" image
22" x 26" framed
Sold
"The Exiles"
(this image is a painting study- original will look same only as finished as the other paintings)
oil on panel
11" x 14" image
framed image/size coming soon
Sold
"Ghosts"
oil on panel
16" x 20" image
20" x 24" framed
$5000.
"Water God" detail
"They Talked of Tin" detail
"Ghosts" detail
3 comments:
I've never heard of Despain before. I think I'm in love now.
I must say that since this has been posted for the last few days.... I have found my new favourite artist!!!!
Now I need to really work harder so I can have some of this beautiful set of imagination in my home!
I will be posting a info to quite a few blogs about this!
Btw, I saved some of the images the other day and they are now on my computer and friends have commented, questioning who the artist is ;)
The paintings are very nice, but I have to take issue with the incorrect usage of the word "belie" in the artist's statement. It's a nice word, but "convey" would probably get the point across better. I don't even know why I bother to read these things. What was that Eno quote about "writing about music is like dancing about architecture"? It applies to visual art as well. Was that even Eno, or do all unclaimed quotes get accredited to him by default?
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