PEGAN BROOKE: TEN YEARS OF WATER
“These pictures will captivate you, if you let them. But as with other equally subtle work, you need to empty your mind of daily distractions for their whispery eloquence to reach you. “ – Robert L. Pincus, San Diego Union Tribune
Gallery Bergelli presents “Ten Years of Water” a solo exhibition
inspired by the Bolinas coast as well as the gorgeous shimmery canvases from the most recent body of work inspired by the high snow-covered mountains in Sun Valley.
“Nature challenges us to contemplate a deeper understanding of what our lives are and leads us to recognition of the interconnectedness of all things...” – Pegan Brooke
of paintings by Bay Area artist Pegan Brooke. Opening June 6, with the Gallery Reception on June 8th from 4-6pm, and Artist Talk at 5pm, the exhibition continues through July 10, 2013.
Pegan Brooke’s paintings have been exhibited for many years, including exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, SFMOMA, Oakland Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Des Moines Art
Pegan Brooke creates ethereal abstract works that take their cues from the natural environment. Marked by rising and receding color fields, structured by natural patterns and rhythms,
Center and Museum, Sao Paulo Biennale and the Monterey Museum of Art. Brooke is a recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Grant, two Marin Arts Council Grants, and an alternate award for the Prix de Rome. She was also awarded
“Brooke’s canvases communicate a sense of awe of the world around her, enveloping the viewer in meditative depictions of beauty that alternately soothe and stimulate. Her imagery is both familiar and otherworldly, inviting reflection and suggesting the possibility of transcendence by contemplation.”
Artist in Residency fellowships at the Millay Colony for the Arts in New York and five residencies at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in France. Brooke’s paintings have been reviewed in numerous publications, including The LA Times, The
SF Examiner, The New York Times and Art in America. Pegan Brooke’s work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, U.S. Embassies in Sri Lanka and Bolivia, Mills College, University of Nebraska Art Museum, State of Iowa Capitol Building, Bank of America International Headquarters, Standard Oil Corporation, Prudential Insurance
– Ann C. Ray, Marin Magazine
Company, Security Pacific Bank, Oracle Headquarters, Mer-
30 paintings created in the last ten years will be presented in
edith Corporation, McDonald Corporation, The Principal Finan-
this survey exhibition. “Ten Years of Water” will consist of col-
cial Group, Unocal Corporation, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Anderson
orful river paintings inspired by observation of the river in Pont
Collection, Roselyn Swig Collection, Charles R. Schwab, and
Aven, France, together with a collection of subtle sea paintings
Steven Chase Collection.
The Dragon’s Whisper: A Note on Pegan Brooke’s Recent Paintings
on the visible components revealed in the sublime vistas of river, mountain and sky that were so characteristic of landscape paintings of the T’ang and Sung dynasties. Through those im-
The ancient sages of China believed in dragons. These
ages, and more importantly, through the way that they were
were not the leather-winged fire-breathers of medieval Euro-
painted, viewers were and still are led to the recognition that
pean legend: instead, they were dragons of a more ethereal
the whole of the natural world is alive and intertwined at the
breed. They were animistic personifications of the invisible
deepest level of being. And this lesson extends to all of the
spirit energies that infuse every aspect of the natural world,
great traditions of Asian painting, whether or not they were
and they were crucial to any understanding of how those sages
based on the shapeliness of the calligraphic gesture or on visu-
understood that world. Sometimes the spirit dragons of Asia
alizing the soft grandeur of the Yangtse river gorge.
were pictured as giant grimacing serpents whose muscular
coils were exaggerated mimics of the unseen undulations of
Brooke’s recent series of landscape-inspired abstract paintings.
land, river and sky. More often however, they were not pic-
The cursory glance tells us that these predominantly tonalist
tured at all, and could only be understood by the discerning
works are elegant gradations of oil paint infiltrated with sub-
eye as evocative hints of the invisible forces that exert a pull
tle inflections of unpredictable chromatic additions that make
Invisible dragons also haunt and animate Pegan
them shimmer in the light of a closer scrutiny. Their scale is
As has always been the case, Brooke’s paintings have followed
neither seductively small nor declaratively large, meaning that
. suit of how nature is immediately experienced, meaning the
their guileless invitation to intimate gazing is perfectly bal-
that the new works can be seen to reflect the rugged rawness
anced by their confident intrusion into the social spaces that
of rockface and snowscape. But the work is still haunted by the
they might inhabit, never brash, noisy or pretentious, and cer-
ebb and flow of the energies of nature, even as their attention
tainly never willing to lapse into the visual gimmickry that is all-
has moved further from the chop and crest of the ocean’s sur-
too-often seen in recent exhibitions of contemporary art. With
face, and much closer to the energies that underlie the sheer
that much said, it is also important to note the countervailing
drama of high mountain geology.
fact that Brooke’s paintings never lapse into any ingratiating
coyness for the sake of giving the viewer too much easy com-
the condition of high velocity image consumption that is so
fort. Certainly the work is nothing if not generous in its spirit of
characteristic of various forms of electronic media. In this em-
luxuriant visual pleasure, but is makes a few demands on the
phasis on deceleration, they are very much of a piece with the
viewer’s knowledge of the history of painting along the way,
work of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), that Bolognese master of
simply because they know that the position that they take in
meditative tonality. Like Morandi’s work, Brooke’s decelerated
relation to that history is part of how they function in the world.
paintings bring the viewer back to a condition of experience
The paint in the most recent body of work is slightly
where the inner clock of being can better coordinate with the
thicker than was the case in years past, and their color is signif-
outer clock of social requirement, and in so doing, align that
icantly subdued, emphasizing a more austere tonality tinctured
work with the way that the body absorbs and grows into and
with hints of color that look like fleeting refractions of light. In
through actual experience rather than mere sensation. Indeed,
previous bodies of work, vibrant color played a more crucial role
their layering of pigment bears an uncanny resemblance to the
in Brooke’s paintings. Those earlier efforts featured gradations
ways that geographical topographies layer themselves over the
of two or three closely related richly hued colors, and it was
course of geological time. In grounding the viewer’s experience
never hard to see how any individual painting would shift from
in this kind of decelerated time, they also celebrate the gains
presenting graphic variations of those colors to emphasizing
of wisdom that come from the accretion of worldly experience,
how they could be seen as invitations to see their rich pools of
this in subtle opposition to the empty timelessness of perpet-
color as a vast spatial vista. It is worth noting that those earlier
ual sensation that goes everywhere and nowhere at the same
paintings were painted in a studio in Bolinas, California that
time.
was but a short walk from a tall cliff that looked down and out
-Mark Van Proyen
and upon the vast ocean reaching out to a distant horizon. As
Oakland, California April 29, 2013.
Brooke’s paintings force the viewer to decelerate from
stunning and brilliant as the color of those paintings are, their real inspirations had to be play of light and atmosphere bred by
the breathtaking magenta sunsets of that place’s fall and spring
responding editor for Art in America, and has also published
seasons. The more recent paintings were executed in studio in
in Art News, Art Criticism, Artweek, ArtNet, Bad Subjects and
the high mountain environs of Sun Valley, Idaho, where thinner
Square Cylinder. He is Associate Professor at the San Francisco
air and frosty light are the central themes of everyday seeing.
Art Institute.
Mark Van Proyen is a Bay Area-based art critic, cor-
S-102 oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 62”x52”
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oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”
oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”
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oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”
oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”
S-62, S-63, S-66 oil on canvas, 18”x18”, each
S-72 oil on canvas, 28”x28”
“ ...these predominantly tonalist works are elegant gradations of oil paint infiltrated with subtle inflections of unpredictable chromatic additions that make them shimmer in the light...”
S-89 oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 30”x24”
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S-88
oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 30”x24”
oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 30”x24”
R-5 oil on canvas, 38”x48”
R-10 oil on canvas, 75”x52”
R-15 oil on canvas, 74”x45”
S-104, S-103 oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 36�x28�, each (front and back cover)
Front Cover: S-104, oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 36”x28” Back Cover: S-103, oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 36”x28” © 2013 Gallery Bergelli. All rights reserved. 483 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur, CA 94939 www.bergelli.com, 415-945-9454 Photo Credits: Josh Wells and Jay Daniel