A RETROSPECTIVE BY BRETT BUSANG
MEMPHIS WASHINGTON, DC NEW YORK CITY SYRACUSE RICHMOND
RAINY EVENING, BQE BROOKLYN ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 20” X 24”
MCCARREN PARK WALKWAY BROOKLYN ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 30”
Choosing favorites is everything it’s cracked up to be. You’ve given yourself an opportunity to cull some out and cast others aside. You can assert preferences you didn’t even know you had - or had so emphatically that it’s high time you did something about it. It’s also an opportunity to reassess things you thought you had understood and might be revisited with a sense of:
always felt that my reach exceeded my grasp - assuming that one is categorically superior to the other, which I do not. When I’ve come back to any starting-point, it’s with greater trepidation than the confidence experience is said to instill. When you paint, you always feel inadequate. Which is also why you paint.
“What is this?”
I can only conclude, from the many years I’ve spent celebrating visual phenomena, that any kind of exploration will be accompanied with seams and snags; forward movement followed by a lurch that pulls you back; great moments succeeded by thousands of lapses that can do little more - to paraphrase a self-deprecating monarch - than signify nothing except for a restless search whose inglorious aftermath sticks around more persistently than any taste or smell.
These paintings have been singled out, not necessarily because I believe them to be my best, but because I think they harmonize so well. I consider them a kind of retrospective that has less to do with a milestone (what might that be?) than with a moment. I’ve been given an opportunity and this is what I’ve made of it. Perhaps a smallish milestone can be dug away from the turf that surrounds it. I’ve been painting longer than I will paint. I’ve been passionately dedicated, perennially frustrated, and disappointingly erratic. I’ve made the occasional breakthrough, followed by minor catastrophes and invisible meltdowns. I’ve occasionally astonished myself with something even I might want, if I were a collector, to hang in a favorite niche or alcove. Yet I’ve
Yet, whatever a painting may look like especially if it is regarded to be less than perfect - if it is conceived in a spirit of inquiry, it is worthwhile. That is also why I am presenting these. I can say, without exaggeration, that each painting started out as a question. Which is the best possible genesis we can know. BRETT BUSANG WASHINGTON, DC MARCH 2018
SANDBAR, BROWN’S ISLAND RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 18” X 28”
PLACES I’VE BEEN
Memphis I grew up in Memphis when it was hopelessly segregated and up to no good. Those two aims and intentions are still there, but they have happily diminished. Yet so much of it needs so much work that it would almost be charitable to tear it all down and start over. New York City There are too many painters in New York City, which is why I left it. I came, however, because I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. My visual record of it is spotty, but, because the place is big enough to accommodate one and all, it is respectfully anonymous rather than disgracefully obscure. Syracuse Syracuse is the first mid-sized city I had ever known – and came to adore in a way that’s open to question. It is defined by its weather, which comes crashing down, in the shape of snowdrifts that seem to materialize in midair. The people there profess to like it. Which is one of the reasons so many other people move away. Richmond I moved to Richmond before the internet began to make shut-ins of so many of us. It was also the city it had been for nearly two centuries: insular, provincial, and self-regarding to a fault. All of these qualities and attributes are still there, but they’re shifting. Which is a very good thing.
Washington, DC I came here to get away from Richmond. Now I want to get away from Washington, which has disappointed me in ways I should have known it would. Yet it is just the sort of place that expects a great deal of people – which is precisely what I wanted. What I didn’t want was the intellectual monolith it has always been and always will be. Washington thinks mostly with its left brain, with the result that, whatever happens outside of it is rejected too readily and seen as something good. Miscellaneous I got to know Brunswick, Maryland because of a personal relationship. Yet I have never been so enthralled with a place that had strict and certain boundaries; a culture that did not include the likes of me at all; and a population whose livelihood had drifted away. That left the place itself, which should be more vacant than it is – though, if you take a walk down Potomac Street at night, it will feel empty and you are likely to go right along.
DEAD TREE WASHINGTON, DC ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 20” X 24”
LINCOLN PARK WASHINGTON, DC ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 30”
PROMISED LAND WASHINGTON, DC ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 32” X 40”
CATHERINE STREET RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 32” X 54”
HER GARAGE SYRACUSE ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 32” X 30”
DRESSED FOR THE EVENING RICHMOND FIRST BASE ACRYLIC ON CANVAS RICHMOND 36” X 34” ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 47” X 37”
BRIDGES RAISED AND FALLEN RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 39” X 39”
SNOWBOUND GRANT BLVD SYRACUSE ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 20”X 24”
CARPORT AND CLOUDS NORTHEAST DC ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 18”
AC NEW YORK CITY ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 20”
WALL RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 18” X 32”
RIPRAP, MAYO BRIDGE RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 20” X 16”
FOGGY EVENING MIDTOWN MEMPHIS ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 17” X 21”
SIDE-YARD, JACKSON AND ADAMS STREETS (TRIPTYCH) RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE | 24” X 90”
WELLER HOUSE NORTH DAKOTA ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 30” X 28”
TRACKS IN THE EARTH BEHIND BROAD STREET RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 18’ X 36”
FAST RIVER BELOW BELLE ISLE RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 20” X 24” BOARDED UP RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 18”
NIGHTGAME OVER GRACE (AT LOMBARDY STREET) RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 47” X 39”
LEIGH STREET SHOTGUNS RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 48”
VIRGINIA SEWING RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 50” X 32”
TWO FLIGHTS RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24”X 32”
CORNER STORE, AT BROAD AND THIRD STREETS RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 41” X 47”
TRUCK SYRACUSE ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 36”
TOWN OF HILLSBORO NORTH DAKOTA ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 12”
COLUMBUS AVENUE, SYRACUSE ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 24” X 28”
SEELY HILL (TRIPTYCH) SYRACUSE ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 30” X 72”
BERLIN CEMETERY BRUNSWICK, MD ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 14” X 28”
SINGLE BRACKET RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 38” X 42”
HIGH NOON RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE 20” X 48”
SHINGLE STYLE, JACKSON STREET RICHMOND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 50” X 36”
bbusang@yahoo.com | 202.906.0502 www.bbusang.com