Featured in this issue
Bending the Line: The Bold New Direction of Artist Zoey Brookshire
By Linda Kramer
Artist Zoey Brookshire in her studio. Photo by Donn Young, www.donnyoung.com
After years of painting predominately black on white figurative subjects, Zoey Brookshire has returned in a bold way to the essence of abstraction with a new body of courageous and dramatic works she calls Forma. The name pays homage to a group of mid-twentieth century Italian abstract painters who insisted on the value of abstraction during a time when many of their peers were calling for more human content in art. For Brookshire, there is nothing in abstract art that devalues human content.
At first glance, the paintings of Forma seem simplistic; but the longer you look, the more they reveal the complexity of their dialogue, and they are all about dialogue—one that begins in the studio and extends to the final interpretation by the individual viewer. In describing this transition, Brookshire says, “ Once I have finished a piece, in a sense it belongs to whomever may be looking at it. I want that person to have as much freedom in the interpretation of the pieces as I had in creating them.”
Promethean, Oil on canvas, 48" x 72"
Brookshire’s leap into geometric abstraction began two years ago in her studio, an industrial warehouse in the High Country of Boone, NC. From her first inspirations came an array of dramatic and opulent large-scale canvases that literally stop you in your tracks, holding the eye captive with their effect while at the same time bringing a smile born from their quirky, joyful nature.
Brookshire’s past work, both abstract and figurative, conveyed an emotional intensity while using a limited palette of black, white and grey and red. Not so in Forma. Here, there is a joie de vivre that has been previously absent, and a almost childlike simplicity masterfully executed into lines balanced in perfect pictorial harmony.
Her new works uses a palette she calls “the radiants”—rich violets and blues and the astounding power of yellow, all emphasizing form by minimizing the dialogue of the palette with a disciplined use of light and color. Although Brookshire doesn’t consider herself a classic minimalist, she always pays respect to them and says, “The challenge of creating original works with the fewest possible materials and internal elements has always been exciting to me.”
Babel, Oil on canvas, 48" x 72"
The beauty of the simple shapes and confidently executed designs expressed in Forma, while a record of emotion, are works guided by intellect. The rectangular or circular form of a traditional canvas is an integral aspect in forming her aesthetic choices. She is keenly aware that, when working on canvas, the first form has been pre-established. Then comes the line. The first swift brush stroke which may become the square or the spiral. Just how far can a line take you? And at what point does the commonplace enter the world of the sublime? She has no consciously established schema, rather, the lines are spontaneous and certain, somehow knowing where they are going.
A narrative emerges the closer one looks at the works. Profound stories and moving messages within the paintings begin to define themselves, placing the viewer directly within the conversation between the seen and unseen worlds while never stating the obvious.
Brookshire has earned the accolades of her contemporaries for the past 25 years and she is most often described as provocative, fresh and always ready to take risks. Her exhibition history includes twenty solo exhibits and she is a former South Carolina Fellow in Visual Arts. She has been represented at The Art Cellar in Banner Elk, NC for over 15 years and has also been shown by galleries in Winston-Salem and Washington, DC.
Distant Echo of the Near, Oil on canvas, 48" x 72"
“A description by Cezanne on the taste of the artist in painting, ‘to find a harmony that parallels to nature’, is especially poignant to me”, says Brookshire. “Although the natural world may appear to be absent in abstract painting, it is not. Nothing I have ever experienced in painting is truly separate from our natural world. I’m quite sure my concerns with balance are informed by the flower balanced on the top of its stem, or a tree angled from a mountainside as much as a mathematical equation. There is also the internal equilibrium we all seek that is an influence as powerful as anything external. That, as much as anything, has been a significant point of departure in these works.”
Zoey Brookshire lives the art of imagination, defying every form of imitation. She is inspired by the natural and magical and connected by the incredible beauty between light and form. And if it’s true that the line is essence and art is a language, an expression of a need to communicate, then we should hope that Zoey Brookshire never stops talking and bending the line.
Linda Kramer is a writer living in Raleigh, NC. Sheis a contributor to ArtNews, La Vie Claire, Marquee, Carolina Art and Architecture and a columnist and feature writer covering the art scene in western NC for Carolina Living magazine.
