Blake Brasher

My paintings are about color and form and escape and birth, penetration and distortion, balance, harmony, and disturbance. They are abstract expressionism in a pop art pallet. My best works are large, up to 50”x73”. The ample real estate of such large canvases allows me to more fully develop ideas about the relationship of the human body to the work. I can use not just the fine and delicate muscles that control my fingers, but get my whole body into the act.
While I am painting I tend to go through explosions of activity, often throwing paint at the canvas or pouring large pools of medium with ribbons of pigment mixed in and attacking the pooled mess with a giant pallet knife, followed by hours of sitting with the canvas making only the occasional small mark or adjustment. During these quite times I try to see the painting as it could be rather than as it is, and these ideas eventually blossom into the the next explosion of activity. These cycles repeat until the has resolved itself into a coherent composition.
My process is gestural and evolutionary. My first pass at a fresh canvas is unscripted, unplanned, dictated just as much by the paint mixtures left over from the previous work as by any pre-conceived notion of a theme. As I work I tend to my paintings as an experimental gardener might tend to a field, pruning down trees that have grown to large, nurturing certain weeds that may pop up unexpectedly, and occasionally transplanting entities from one area to another. The end result it a vibrant ecosystem of color and form.