John Brosio

Okay, here is a major piece from 2000. It is large at 60 × 72. And I very deliberately placed it here in my gallery right next to and following “Jerk in a Field” so that you can see the similarities. The central arrangement is almost exactly the same with its “up/ down” configuration. The figure and ferris wheel between the two paintings are almost interchangeable.

But – this painting here is very very intuitive. I do not know exactly where it came from and I think there is a danger in trying to overly describe it because I cannot. All I can do is offer certain fragments of thought. It can easily be viewed as satirical humor in that the painting places this overwhelming and dangerous natural event into a grouping of more masturbatory but also spinning distractions. And when I made this, tornadoes had not yet become an object of marketing: Extreme tourism and serialized storm chaser shows had yet to happen. And, of course, the folks here seem totally unconcerned with what is taking place because maybe it is just another ride. On the flip side, who doesn’t walk through a carnival at dusk without imagining that there is a secret, dark, and candied destination behind all of the extreme stimuli? Read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and tell me that he’s not tripping on exactly that. There is a time of day/ night when the sky becomes part of the carnival. It just happens. And there is this kind of monstrous fuel or longing on the backside of it as if the whole event was waiting for that exactly teasing time of day. This notion is in the works to fuel more adventurous work over here, all things being equal. We’ll see.

I can certainly address the composition though. Click through the “facets” here and see the first painting, Rides, to get a sense of how it birthed this later, “widescreen” version. And look at how symmetrical it is – every side element cascades down to focus back on that original, “up/ down” dynamic between twister and ferris wheel/ good and evil, what have you. For instance, the ride on the left of the canvas is curved downward from its entry just like the arrangement of tree on the right. And below that are what might look like opening gates to a more scrutinous inspector: a kind of arched wall on the left and a green diagonal barrier more hidden but present under the bottom right of the ferris wheel. Without going into excessive detail, note the use of more verticals to the sides and more horizontals toward the base of things at center. The figures too diminish in size as space identifiers as they proceed into the environment but very little of this arranging was planned. One thing I did get crap for was putting a still life at the lower left. But I wanted something immediate for the viewer. Is it over the top? Absolutely and deliberately. I’m sure too that without it the large figure on the right would not have shown up for balance.

Be sure to check out the facets on this one as I am going to post some great sources of inspiration.