Daniel Brush, Blood-Bird

"With drafting pen in hand, and who knows what in mind, [Daniel] Brush spends countless hours penning the same line. The works he thus composes are nearly 10 feet tall, and, I think, imposing. Delicate yet dreary, humble, yet while humble pompous, they seem the work of someone who finds liberation through enslavement. The trip is his, not mine." --Paul Richard, Washington Post, 1975, reviewing "Five Washington Artists" at the Corcoran Gallery. Brush now lives in New York and makes intricate work with gold.

- tom moody 4-12-2006 2:05 am

DB probably hears the drag, the pull, and its qualities-- a glide.
Practical stuff--really, though different from designing a nuclear submarine.

I've moved into a new place with a garden and people say when will I make the garden. My reply is that I'm waiting for the history to grow to make sense of it!
It's not exactly true because there is not a second that passes that I don't make a decision. But I'm actively waiting all-the-same.

brenthallard


- anonymous (guest) 4-12-2006 6:05 pm


some of my best experiences making art is when i have to do a lot of manual labour - without the contant subjective/aesthetic decision making.
http://blog.markdixon.ca
- markdixon.ca (guest) 4-12-2006 9:25 pm


who says busy work is w/ out subjective and aesthetic decision making? your in the zone but thats still happening. i think.
- bill 4-12-2006 9:50 pm


These were done on big stretched cotton duck canvases. He used a straightedge and an old fountain pen loaded with a predetermined color of acrylic. He claimed he fasted he before painting them and then worked continuously till done. The left edge never varied; the subjectivity is where the line stopped on the right and the overall steadiness you would have to make a line that long (even with a ruler). My guess is if he got halfway down the canvas and screwed up he'd have to start over. They were nice paintings. I thought about them because an old Shafrazi artist just resurfaced on the new media sites who used a machine/sprayer to make horizontal lines like this--they formed (kitschy) images like a raster scan of a TV. I got nostalgic for this work, which I think is a more interesting project.
- tom moody 4-12-2006 10:07 pm