Brandon Cook

My focus is on painting as a processon pushing the media of paint on canvas in new ways, toward new edges. I start with abstracted designs and patterns in the landscape. I paint using extreme ranges of value, color, texture, thickness, and thinness. I brush into the canvas, rub it, spatter it, scumble it, glaze it. I use brushes, rags, cotton swabs, my hand, fast strokes, short strokes, wet over dry, wet in wet. I throw paint on, pull it off, let it runanything I can do to manipulate my medium, to draw out the sense of attachment I feel for the subjects of my painting. No mark is precious to me when it goes down because I know it will recede behind the other layers of paint. I build the painting intuitively, leaving it open to an evolving response to what the piece is becoming, until finally I feel I cannot add anything to it and call it finished.

I paint the landscape because it offers a common ground where people can relate to my work while I am afforded the freedom to challenge the boundaries of the paint. The more I paint, the more my subject matter becomes secondary to the painting process. I seek out landscapes with strong compositional attributes that speak for themselves despite my focus on technique. I am fascinated by the strong abstract lines and planes of the West because they lend themselves to a fast-moving, unstructured energy that mirrors the painting process. With multiple layers of paint and glazes, I strive to emulate the process of creation and destruction with a visual history that reflects my sense of the natural order and a somewhat conflicting desire for purpose. While it is the beauty of the landscape that motivates me; abstractly, the sky becomes a bright area of the painting, the tree in the foreground a dark mass. Heeding intuition rather than preconceived ideas, I search and experiment, using color and contrast to create the drama and energy of each piece.

I was born August 9, 1972, and began my education early, learning from my uncle, John Jarvis, who was named among the top one hundred painters in Utah's 150-year art tradition. I attended Utah Valley State College and later received my Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Utah in 1996, studying the tradition of life drawing and plein-air painting. In addition to my education at the college and university, I have taken numerous summer workshops: Paul Davis (Solstice Workshop; La Salle, UT 1994/1995), David Dornan (Workshop; Helper, UT 1995/2001), Tony Smith (Workshop; Helper, UT 1995), and Doug Braithwaite (Workshop; Helper, UT 2001). Most recently, my work has been influenced by a group study session in figure drawing as well as plein-air painting with my peers.