'Cosmic Symmetries' at Quint Gallery is one of Brookes' first shows since a pre-pandemic virus-themed sculpture exhibit
First, he used to live across the street from me in North Park, and I would walk past his backyard studio everyday to see him diligently sketching or painting. Second, and after he relocated to South Park, he rented out a studio space right across the hall from the newspaper office I worked at.
Coincidentally, one of Brookes’ last solo shows before the pandemic hit featured sculptures dealing with viruses. Once lockdown measures were in place, Brookes had to cancel a number of exhibitions and commissions, but was fortunate in that he had a large enough following to where he was still able to sell paintings and prints online to make ends meet.
“When all that got taken away, and I’m at home teaching my kids at the kitchen table, getting that hour and a half break to go out on the patio, when it was just me and I could paint, I totally reconnected with why I was doing what I was doing,” Brookes recalls. “It was heaven to just sit there and focus on one thing. And I just thought, ‘this is why I paint.’ I was just so happy to be back in that place.
“I think what I’ve found over the years is that perfect symmetry is really fun and immediately visually pleasing, but over time, it can become burdensome in its repetition,” Brookes says. “But that being said, total asymmetry, total chaos, that was not interesting to me at all. So what I found was that as symmetry goes from perfection to total chaos, there’s a place in the middle. It isn’t perfectly symmetrical but, to me, that is the most visually pleasing.
Brookes goes on to describe the elves as “one of the silliest things,” as well as one of “the most appealing and fun things” he’s ever done. But just as in his work, the meaning of the creatures is multilayered. He says there came a point in the process where he felt he wanted to be “inside the painting.”
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