Pegan Brooke: Ten Years of Water

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PEGAN BROOKE: TEN YEARS OF WATER


“These pictures will captivate you, if you let them. But as with other equally subtle work, you need to empty your mind of daily distractions for their whispery eloquence to reach you. “ – Robert L. Pincus, San Diego Union Tribune

Gallery Bergelli presents “Ten Years of Water” a solo exhibition

inspired by the Bolinas coast as well as the gorgeous shimmery canvases from the most recent body of work inspired by the high snow-covered mountains in Sun Valley.

“Nature challenges us to contemplate a deeper understanding of what our lives are and leads us to recognition of the interconnectedness of all things...” – Pegan Brooke

of paintings by Bay Area artist Pegan Brooke. Opening June 6, with the Gallery Reception on June 8th from 4-6pm, and Artist Talk at 5pm, the exhibition continues through July 10, 2013.

Pegan Brooke’s paintings have been exhibited for many years, including exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, SFMOMA, Oakland Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Des Moines Art

Pegan Brooke creates ethereal abstract works that take their cues from the natural environment. Marked by rising and receding color fields, structured by natural patterns and rhythms,

Center and Museum, Sao Paulo Biennale and the Monterey Museum of Art. Brooke is a recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Grant, two Marin Arts Council Grants, and an alternate award for the Prix de Rome. She was also awarded

“Brooke’s canvases communicate a sense of awe of the world around her, enveloping the viewer in meditative depictions of beauty that alternately soothe and stimulate. Her imagery is both familiar and otherworldly, inviting reflection and suggesting the possibility of transcendence by contemplation.”

Artist in Residency fellowships at the Millay Colony for the Arts in New York and five residencies at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in France. Brooke’s paintings have been reviewed in numerous publications, including The LA Times, The

SF Examiner, The New York Times and Art in America. Pegan Brooke’s work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, U.S. Embassies in Sri Lanka and Bolivia, Mills College, University of Nebraska Art Museum, State of Iowa Capitol Building, Bank of America International Headquarters, Standard Oil Corporation, Prudential Insurance

– Ann C. Ray, Marin Magazine

Company, Security Pacific Bank, Oracle Headquarters, Mer-

30 paintings created in the last ten years will be presented in

edith Corporation, McDonald Corporation, The Principal Finan-

this survey exhibition. “Ten Years of Water” will consist of col-

cial Group, Unocal Corporation, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Anderson

orful river paintings inspired by observation of the river in Pont

Collection, Roselyn Swig Collection, Charles R. Schwab, and

Aven, France, together with a collection of subtle sea paintings

Steven Chase Collection.


The Dragon’s Whisper: A Note on Pegan Brooke’s Recent Paintings

on the visible components revealed in the sublime vistas of river, mountain and sky that were so characteristic of landscape paintings of the T’ang and Sung dynasties. Through those im-

The ancient sages of China believed in dragons. These

ages, and more importantly, through the way that they were

were not the leather-winged fire-breathers of medieval Euro-

painted, viewers were and still are led to the recognition that

pean legend: instead, they were dragons of a more ethereal

the whole of the natural world is alive and intertwined at the

breed. They were animistic personifications of the invisible

deepest level of being. And this lesson extends to all of the

spirit energies that infuse every aspect of the natural world,

great traditions of Asian painting, whether or not they were

and they were crucial to any understanding of how those sages

based on the shapeliness of the calligraphic gesture or on visu-

understood that world. Sometimes the spirit dragons of Asia

alizing the soft grandeur of the Yangtse river gorge.

were pictured as giant grimacing serpents whose muscular

coils were exaggerated mimics of the unseen undulations of

Brooke’s recent series of landscape-inspired abstract paintings.

land, river and sky. More often however, they were not pic-

The cursory glance tells us that these predominantly tonalist

tured at all, and could only be understood by the discerning

works are elegant gradations of oil paint infiltrated with sub-

eye as evocative hints of the invisible forces that exert a pull

tle inflections of unpredictable chromatic additions that make

Invisible dragons also haunt and animate Pegan


them shimmer in the light of a closer scrutiny. Their scale is

As has always been the case, Brooke’s paintings have followed

neither seductively small nor declaratively large, meaning that

. suit of how nature is immediately experienced, meaning the

their guileless invitation to intimate gazing is perfectly bal-

that the new works can be seen to reflect the rugged rawness

anced by their confident intrusion into the social spaces that

of rockface and snowscape. But the work is still haunted by the

they might inhabit, never brash, noisy or pretentious, and cer-

ebb and flow of the energies of nature, even as their attention

tainly never willing to lapse into the visual gimmickry that is all-

has moved further from the chop and crest of the ocean’s sur-

too-often seen in recent exhibitions of contemporary art. With

face, and much closer to the energies that underlie the sheer

that much said, it is also important to note the countervailing

drama of high mountain geology.

fact that Brooke’s paintings never lapse into any ingratiating

coyness for the sake of giving the viewer too much easy com-

the condition of high velocity image consumption that is so

fort. Certainly the work is nothing if not generous in its spirit of

characteristic of various forms of electronic media. In this em-

luxuriant visual pleasure, but is makes a few demands on the

phasis on deceleration, they are very much of a piece with the

viewer’s knowledge of the history of painting along the way,

work of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), that Bolognese master of

simply because they know that the position that they take in

meditative tonality. Like Morandi’s work, Brooke’s decelerated

relation to that history is part of how they function in the world.

paintings bring the viewer back to a condition of experience

The paint in the most recent body of work is slightly

where the inner clock of being can better coordinate with the

thicker than was the case in years past, and their color is signif-

outer clock of social requirement, and in so doing, align that

icantly subdued, emphasizing a more austere tonality tinctured

work with the way that the body absorbs and grows into and

with hints of color that look like fleeting refractions of light. In

through actual experience rather than mere sensation. Indeed,

previous bodies of work, vibrant color played a more crucial role

their layering of pigment bears an uncanny resemblance to the

in Brooke’s paintings. Those earlier efforts featured gradations

ways that geographical topographies layer themselves over the

of two or three closely related richly hued colors, and it was

course of geological time. In grounding the viewer’s experience

never hard to see how any individual painting would shift from

in this kind of decelerated time, they also celebrate the gains

presenting graphic variations of those colors to emphasizing

of wisdom that come from the accretion of worldly experience,

how they could be seen as invitations to see their rich pools of

this in subtle opposition to the empty timelessness of perpet-

color as a vast spatial vista. It is worth noting that those earlier

ual sensation that goes everywhere and nowhere at the same

paintings were painted in a studio in Bolinas, California that

time.

was but a short walk from a tall cliff that looked down and out

-Mark Van Proyen

and upon the vast ocean reaching out to a distant horizon. As

Oakland, California April 29, 2013.

Brooke’s paintings force the viewer to decelerate from

stunning and brilliant as the color of those paintings are, their real inspirations had to be play of light and atmosphere bred by

the breathtaking magenta sunsets of that place’s fall and spring

responding editor for Art in America, and has also published

seasons. The more recent paintings were executed in studio in

in Art News, Art Criticism, Artweek, ArtNet, Bad Subjects and

the high mountain environs of Sun Valley, Idaho, where thinner

Square Cylinder. He is Associate Professor at the San Francisco

air and frosty light are the central themes of everyday seeing.

Art Institute.

Mark Van Proyen is a Bay Area-based art critic, cor-


S-102 oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 62”x52”


S-84

S-81

oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”

oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”


S-82

S-80

oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”

oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 22”x18”


S-62, S-63, S-66 oil on canvas, 18”x18”, each


S-72 oil on canvas, 28”x28”


“ ...these predominantly tonalist works are elegant gradations of oil paint infiltrated with subtle inflections of unpredictable chromatic additions that make them shimmer in the light...”

S-89 oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 30”x24”


S-93

S-88

oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 30”x24”

oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 30”x24”


R-5 oil on canvas, 38”x48”


R-10 oil on canvas, 75”x52”


R-15 oil on canvas, 74”x45”


S-104, S-103 oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 36�x28�, each (front and back cover)


Front Cover: S-104, oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 36”x28” Back Cover: S-103, oil on canvas, metallic and mica pigments, 36”x28” © 2013 Gallery Bergelli. All rights reserved. 483 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur, CA 94939 www.bergelli.com, 415-945-9454 Photo Credits: Josh Wells and Jay Daniel


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