BRENDAN MONROE
You’ve just opened your 3rd exhibition at the Richard Heller Gallery entitled, ‘Places Between Here and Here’, after a year of anticipation how do you feel it’s all come together? Can you tell us a bit about it?
Yes, a lot of anticipation and a lot of work. It’s all together now and I’m very happy with how it’s come out. I always worry a lot about shows and try not to have too many expectations before hand. This time everything I thought of worked out well even though I only had a rough plan of things in my head.
We’ve noticed a very definite evolution in your content and style, with a lot of your more recent work being fairly abstract. Have you consciously refined your approaches or do you feel it’s been a natural progression?
I’m always trying to redefine things. I like new things and try to constantly make some kind of progression in my work. So I think it’s both, natural progression and conscious refinement. The newer abstract work is born out of the older and less abstract work.
In the past I’ve picked up a paintbrush only to find myself creating vast, textured blobs purely because it relieves something onto the page. When looking at the application of your paint it seems to emanate what I feel. Do you find something therapeutic through the motion of painting?
Yes, absolutely! In my work there is a lot of repeating brush strokes and really just putting blobs and lines on the paper. I think it’s sort of a nice fundamental way of making marks and I like to bring out images from those kinds of basics. I do find it very meditative once I get going on something and just sort of let my hands do the work.
I’ve heard a lot of people describe your work as ‘organic’ and there seems to be a lot of references to biology and microbiology within your work. Your interview with Dr Simon F Park seems to me to crystallise a fondness for nature and science. Are they integral elements of inspiration for you or has their merit been overplayed by past critics? How do you feel they feed into your work?
I draw from those sources a lot. Actually Simon is someone who I emailed back and forth with about microbes and art. He collaborates with artists who want to use microbiology in their work somehow. I’m interested in the unseen micro worlds, but also I’m interested in life in general. I like to discover what the fundamentals of living things are, there is something really interesting to me about physical elements making electricity and becoming alive. I think the same goes with thoughts and the brain. All of our abstract thoughts are created from physical neurons that organize millions of complex bits of information and signals.
I’ve read that both your parents were involved in the sciences and that as a child you had a keen interest in more technical subjects, where do you feel your love for art came from and how did you decide it was something you wanted to continue doing?
Oh, my parents not only were interested in sciences but they also pushed creativity. When I think about it I don’t think I ever had them saying anything like you shouldn’t be an artist because you should try and go into a more stable career, be a doctor or something. They just seemed to be supportive on all sorts of stuff that I was into. I have always made things. Not art, but things. Tree forts, booby traps, string mazes, sand castles, model planes all sorts of stuff. I think art making just seemed to be the best thing to make when it came to making something that had a part of myself in it. It’s the best way to communicate feelings and thoughts from ones self. Though I think mine are not so direct.
There’s something quietly pensive about a lot of your work, it feels like a warm memory, both ethereal and comforting. Do you aim to tell stories or is your work more about evoking certain emotions?
I think I want to get more of a mood across. Things are happening in my images, but often they are similar from one to the next. I hope they can make a language in the non-specific place they exist in. I try and place everything in a sort of dream-cloud and then between images there are some occurrences or scenes that I draw attention to. I wouldn’t necessarily call them stories, but bits of experiences. The emotions are a little more important to me to communicate. I think often I like to try and bring love, warmth and comfort in. Sometimes I end up with confusion, frustration and chaos though.
You’ve recently moved to Stockholm to support your extremely talented wife Eva Fan whilst she’s on a graduate course. Her work contains the same warmth as yours but is depicted in a much more minimal manner. How do you find working alongside each other?
I love working with her. We have much different habits but we tend to go well with each other. We definitely bounce off each other often. It’s good to have someone next to you whose opinion is always honest, even though you might not always listen to it. That goes for the both of us. We tend to be stubborn people, but we always want to hear what the other has to say. I think for us we also both benefit from trying to work ideas out loud and it helps that we can sort of work through things with each other.
I’ve noticed that a lot of your paintings are much bigger than I first expected, especially in comparison to Eva’s work. Are these pieces spontaneous or do you tend to plan out and mould an idea?
I tend to like working on one idea for a long time and I like to have big pieces in my head for a while before I start on them. I also like the presence of large paintings. I think for me they are easier to involve yourself in when looking at them. That’s something I think is really important when I’m trying to bring people into a created place to experience what I want to convey. Evah paints fairly tiny and she likes to have a certain control over the medium. I think that she gets a lot of pleasure out of mastering the medium when she’s executing her ideas. I get that also, but for me I let go of a lot more, or at least I try to.
BRENDAN MONROE
You’ve just opened your 3rd exhibition at the Richard Heller Gallery entitled, ‘Places Between Here and Here’, after a year of anticipation how do you feel it’s all come together? Can you tell us a bit about it?
Yes, a lot of anticipation and a lot of work. It’s all together now and I’m very happy with how it’s come out. I always worry a lot about shows and try not to have too many expectations before hand. This time everything I thought of worked out well even though I only had a rough plan of things in my head.
We’ve noticed a very definite evolution in your content and style, with a lot of your more recent work being fairly abstract. Have you consciously refined your approaches or do you feel it’s been a natural progression?
I’m always trying to redefine things. I like new things and try to constantly make some kind of progression in my work. So I think it’s both, natural progression and conscious refinement. The newer abstract work is born out of the older and less abstract work.
In the past I’ve picked up a paintbrush only to find myself creating vast, textured blobs purely because it relieves something onto the page. When looking at the application of your paint it seems to emanate what I feel. Do you find something therapeutic through the motion of painting?
Yes, absolutely! In my work there is a lot of repeating brush strokes and really just putting blobs and lines on the paper. I think it’s sort of a nice fundamental way of making marks and I like to bring out images from those kinds of basics. I do find it very meditative once I get going on something and just sort of let my hands do the work.
I’ve heard a lot of people describe your work as ‘organic’ and there seems to be a lot of references to biology and microbiology within your work. Your interview with Dr Simon F Park seems to me to crystallise a fondness for nature and science. Are they integral elements of inspiration for you or has their merit been overplayed by past critics? How do you feel they feed into your work?
I draw from those sources a lot. Actually Simon is someone who I emailed back and forth with about microbes and art. He collaborates with artists who want to use microbiology in their work somehow. I’m interested in the unseen micro worlds, but also I’m interested in life in general. I like to discover what the fundamentals of living things are, there is something really interesting to me about physical elements making electricity and becoming alive. I think the same goes with thoughts and the brain. All of our abstract thoughts are created from physical neurons that organize millions of complex bits of information and signals.
I’ve read that both your parents were involved in the sciences and that as a child you had a keen interest in more technical subjects, where do you feel your love for art came from and how did you decide it was something you wanted to continue doing?
Oh, my parents not only were interested in sciences but they also pushed creativity. When I think about it I don’t think I ever had them saying anything like you shouldn’t be an artist because you should try and go into a more stable career, be a doctor or something. They just seemed to be supportive on all sorts of stuff that I was into. I have always made things. Not art, but things. Tree forts, booby traps, string mazes, sand castles, model planes all sorts of stuff. I think art making just seemed to be the best thing to make when it came to making something that had a part of myself in it. It’s the best way to communicate feelings and thoughts from ones self. Though I think mine are not so direct.
There’s something quietly pensive about a lot of your work, it feels like a warm memory, both ethereal and comforting. Do you aim to tell stories or is your work more about evoking certain emotions?
I think I want to get more of a mood across. Things are happening in my images, but often they are similar from one to the next. I hope they can make a language in the non-specific place they exist in. I try and place everything in a sort of dream-cloud and then between images there are some occurrences or scenes that I draw attention to. I wouldn’t necessarily call them stories, but bits of experiences. The emotions are a little more important to me to communicate. I think often I like to try and bring love, warmth and comfort in. Sometimes I end up with confusion, frustration and chaos though.
You’ve recently moved to Stockholm to support your extremely talented wife Eva Fan whilst she’s on a graduate course. Her work contains the same warmth as yours but is depicted in a much more minimal manner. How do you find working alongside each other?
I love working with her. We have much different habits but we tend to go well with each other. We definitely bounce off each other often. It’s good to have someone next to you whose opinion is always honest, even though you might not always listen to it. That goes for the both of us. We tend to be stubborn people, but we always want to hear what the other has to say. I think for us we also both benefit from trying to work ideas out loud and it helps that we can sort of work through things with each other.
I’ve noticed that a lot of your paintings are much bigger than I first expected, especially in comparison to Eva’s work. Are these pieces spontaneous or do you tend to plan out and mould an idea?
I tend to like working on one idea for a long time and I like to have big pieces in my head for a while before I start on them. I also like the presence of large paintings. I think for me they are easier to involve yourself in when looking at them. That’s something I think is really important when I’m trying to bring people into a created place to experience what I want to convey. Evah paints fairly tiny and she likes to have a certain control over the medium. I think that she gets a lot of pleasure out of mastering the medium when she’s executing her ideas. I get that also, but for me I let go of a lot more, or at least I try to.
