March 3 , 2 01 4
John Brosio: Tornadoes, Twisters, And A Jerk In A Road Posted: 12/16/2012 7:07 am
You have to like John Brosio: a guy who appreciates a bottle of Chateau Yquem, but is equally happy with a can of Budweiser. Brosio, who paints Texas twisters with the aplomb and sensitivity of Corot, is an artist who can make you smile and scare you at the same time. His canvases fuse dark humor and a dose of awe into memorable images that get you in the gut. I recently interviewed Brosio about his work and ideas. His responses, like his paintings, are emphatic and engagingly quirky. John Brosio, "Texas Road," 60 x 36 inches, Oil on canvas Scroll down for more images of John Brosio's tornadoes. JS: You are showing tornado and twister paintings at Sue Greenwood Fine Art. Can you tell me what originally attracted you to tornadoes as subject matter? JB: This question has come up before of course but I never took enough time to really think about it. It has always surprised me. I've spent all kinds of time on wording in the past to chase down some kind of justification for what seems like a "weird" or off-center choice of mine and that might have been a mistake. To tell you the truth it seemed obvious. I was at the time even racing with the imagery, thinking that someone else would beat me to it. What would truly interest me is to interview one of many given artists and ask them why they paint people sitting in chairs, dogs, or what have you. We have a TON of paintings like that and no one ever asks about it because our programing -- yours, mine, everyone's programing -- is to instantly consider legitimate that kind of subject matter as all but part/ parcel to the definition of modern representational "Painting." And to be honest I am bored with a lot of that. The really truly good ones I enjoy to no end, the works that articulate space, but there are so many paintings these days of figures intended to look quirky and contemplative but end up as overly expressionless and comfortable as if painted while listening to a lesser episode of Prairie Home Companion. I want to ask someone, "what attracted you to painting people in rooms?" and see what happens. Back to the tornadoes though: they did not originally start out as being exclusively about weather. I had a series of paintings where people were hanging out with a variety of larger-than-life subjects. In the beginning I had folks looking at tornadoes, a B2 bomber, dinosaur skulls on display, a giant dead shark on a pier, etc. The series went that way but the twisters took off with the crowd. And that was fine with me because I loved all of it but ran with my reception. JS: Is it fair to call you a "Romantic" in the sense that your work transmits a sense of awe about the force of nature? JB: Ha! I would call myself a "Romantic" in that sense but a lot of people don't see it in my every day life. There is not much of a chance to explore certain things in every day life. No context for it. But I always thought that what sense of awe I feel and 'transmit' in my work was common to all of our appetites. I used to think that at least. My take on it now is that we are all naturally dazzled by those things but most of us end up crowding them out of worry and wonder by way of our daily considerations such that they get relegated to oddity. And that's dicey I think. Curiosity has been crowded out. It sometimes even goes uncultivated, even in children, and that's just wrong. I've even had people, more than one, ask me why I was looking at the sky when all the stars are out and the more pressing question is, "Why are you not?!" Those natural forces are right next to us and all the time. They are gorgeous, incredible, and dangerous. Living as though they don't affect you is even more dangerous because it is irresponsible. Tornadoes though are probably the most pictorially accessible thing for me to use in representing these forces but I am speaking to the whole dynamic.
John Brosio, "Unleashed," 50 x 68 inches, Oil on canvas