Brendan Healy

I might describe my artmaking as a kind of chase. I’m in pursuit of a very particular set of feelings. If I were to translate these feelings for you no into some combination of words, as we are wont to do as human beings, I might say to you: stark, somber, or perhaps even foreboding at first. Yet this first impression yields to one that is ultimately warm, weirdly optimistic, and friendly. Perhaps what you might experience if you were walking home at night, in a cold light rain, with the overcast sky overhead glowing bizarrely from the light lights below, but you remember that warm coat you are wearing and the home you’re returning to.

With my abstract works, the method is less calculated. There is no formula to start with. Instead I find that there is a branching decision with every application of paint, a new choice to be made for every addition to the painting. To make the “right” choice at each juncture between the last application and the next, I go only with my gut. I try to make choices with as little conscious deliberation as possible, because in this case too much thinking is antithetical to what I want to achieve with these works; there can’t be words for it.

Currently my method of making these feelings manifest from a visual artform has taken two seemingly opposing forms: representational and abstract. With the former, I utilize human forms within familiar environments to present a scenario that attempts to evoke those moods that I previously described. 

I can take my inspiration from images in everyday life, and add to them elements that attempt to suggest something more out of the ordinary. Stylistically, I find I also take inspiration from a wide variety of other artists, covering a wide range of eras, moods and styles: Gustav Klimt, James Jean, Toshio Saeki, or John Singer Sargent to name a few.