John Brosio

Here, finally, is a painting that is not entirely dry. This is “Queen of Suburbia” at 48 inches square. From 2012. It is currently at Arcadia Gallery in New York.

The inspiration for this is just what I see around us. We live in a country that is falling apart for now. And those things happen but people are stretching themselves in very disturbing ways not to merely live but to achieve what has become a very prescribed, unattainable, and ridiculous dream. If someone says “American Dream” one more time I’ll wretch. “American Fantasy” would be more like it. I mean, we already did “suburbia” once after WW2 and realized that there were some very disconcerting things about it. Very disconcerting. And right when everyone seemed to be growing up a bit from some of the missteps involved it all started over, only this time on CRACK. Make no mistake, the situation in this country right now was deliberately crafted and designed to hurt people. It is not something that just “happened” as part of an economic cycle. If you have any doubts, go to frontline.org and watch “Money, Power, and Wall Street.”

But anyway, this painting is meant to be disturbing. For sure. The woman in front is obviously very much in control. And a student named Taylor Montague (very talented if you want to look him up) wrote back with the most reassuringly perceptive comment after seeing this: “Holy Crap!…I love the big X in the suburbia painting. Insidiously suggestive!” That was really quite a relief for me because, while he was perhaps referring to the picnic table, the entire painting is hanging on an X and it is meant to be very confrontational: Notice how the cloud deck and receding table on the right side and the the top and bottom boundaries of that wall of the house on the left form an “X” behind our central figure. Notice too how the only bits of primary color are granted to us from behind her back. She is the purveyor of happiness. And the light on her face is this cold kind of “other light” that has little to do with anything all that pleasant. It looks almost as if it were coming from a nuclear bomb test in Nevada. This is my country as I see it right now. As far as the tornado goes, artist Laurie Lipton suggested that it be even smaller and more relegated to the background but I wanted to get that big cloud in the sky and ended up making the funnel bigger. I can see her point though. And that pink house on the right has since (photographed) been muted a bit to resemble more of the ocherish stucco that we see everywhere else here.

One thing that is showing up and seems to be showing up in current work is that weird kind of haze. Like a dream haze. That is just me intuitively rubbing things out and such. I don’t know where that will go but I am having fun with it.

As far as procedure goes, I went out to the eastern portion of Los Angeles County to the cities of Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga to photograph some homes. Many of them had foreclosure notices on them and there were very few people around. It was very easy to get good visual reference. However, the only homes I used for direct reference are those that are furthest back in the painting. The rest are made up for what was needed. It very much helped to just walk around that area. The central figure is based on my girlfriend who was kind enough to pose. And the big wheel and picnic table are a combination of reference and memory. One thing that I am happy with is the arrangement of table top items. That is all made up. It took a couple passes but I think I got it.