ART Habens
Donald Bracken
my studio , was conceived as 3 panels high by 4 panels long . In the installation at NCC , the piece became 1 panel high and 12 panels long .
Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice , and besides kinetic installations you also produce stimulating mixed media works , as the interesting Post 9 / 11 . You seem to be in incessant search of an organic , almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines , taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of colors as well as of motion : While crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results , to express some concepts ?
You know , from an early age I ’ ve always loved drawing . I ’ ve always loved painting . There was a point in my artistic career when I just felt the world didn ’ t need another acrylic landscape painting by me , and so in frustration I picked up a clod of dirt and smeared it on my painting . Then I discovered that I liked the dimension the soil added to the work and so I started using dirt to do landscapes , documenting the disappearing farmlands of Connecticut . I loved the colors of the earth , and I suddenly realized that this made the work not just about the earth but of the earth . It soon became apparent to me that each geographical zone had its own different colors and types of earth that had considerably different characteristics as an artistic medium , and I realized that some earth with high clay content cracked a lot when I made it very thick . I found that there was an interplay between the vision I had for the painting and the nature of the medium , and it felt like I was doing a duet with a jazz musician , because of the medium ’ s inherent qualities . When I had the desire to do a 9 / 11 memorial piece , the intrinsic qualities of the clay inspired me to do an aerial portrait of Manhattan because I knew that the clay would give a shattered effect to the image .
Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Vestiges of Occupation . In this work you explore the blurry boundary between
Looking East , polymerized clay on canvas on panels , 6.6x 1
collective memory and identity , investigating the psychological nature of the cinematic image : in particular , when I first happened to get to know with this work I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of a primary element as water to a single meaning . I later realized I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work , forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content : in your work , rather that a conceptual interiority , I can recognize the desire to enable us to establish direct
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