Blake Brasher

he/him

Lesley Art + Design MFA group 4, June 2021 Residency

Statement

This semester my research was largely centered on the idea of decolonization and what it means. I arrived at a conclusion that is really more just a better starting point than anything that actually ties things up in a neat package. An important aspect of the practice of decolonization is the process of unlearning. Unlearning means thinking carefully about the things that you take to be unquestionable truths. For me personally these include the idea that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a universal good, that technological progress is both inevitable and highly desirable, and that teaching children how to be good scientists is always the right thing to do, even if the children are part of a culture that might have a different set of values. I still have trouble with these; that is to say I’m not sure I was wrong, but at least I have learned to realize that it’s not for certain that these things are true.

In my studio I have returned to a smaller scale of work. In all of 2020 the smallest painting I made was 54” x 54”. In 2021 I have squeezed myself down into such a small space that a painting might only occupy an 11” x 8.5” sheet of paper. This is not a novelty for me, I have plenty of work I’ve done in the past at this scale, but it is always a challenge to transition, and it forces a sort of editorial process to the work. All the things that fit into a wall-sized painting will overload a page sized painting. Painting small also allows me to work on several paintings all at once. This shifts the painting process from one of thinking about the painting deciding what should be done next to one where I can instead let an idea of what to do next freely enter my mind and then decide which of the current paintings I’m working on to do it to. This enables an easier, more free flowing work state and the work becomes more playful and loose.

At the same time, I’ve taken a renewed interest in archiving. I had to sort of abandon my studio in downtown Lowell, MA when Covid happened and we had just moved into a new house and had a baby. I’ve been painting in the basement of the house. Recently I’ve returned to the studio, and have taken the opportunity of not needing it to function as a work space to organize and catalog. I have revisited work from as far back as 2010 and taken new photos and been adding these paintings to my website. Seeing where I have been, and thinking about my artistic journey in this way has also colored the work that I have been producing.

I continue to believe that the universal is something that is worth pursuing, but my “universal” is based on the idea that we reduce experience down to the things that we all share. Surely, there is something that it is like to be a conscious entity. There is something that it is like to have the lights turn on. That is a starting point. That is universal. Direct access to the shared experience of experience may prove to be impossible, but I believe it to be a target worth aiming for.

Bio

Blake Brasher is a visual artist working primarily in mixed media painting. His colorful abstractions are reflections on the nature of reality and what it is like to be a thinking being in a universe that is at once beautiful and terrifying. He grew up in Alaska, and has also lived in Turkey, Texas, and Arizona before moving to Massachusetts in 1997. He received his BS in Art and Design from MIT in 2003 and has been exhibiting his work publicly since 2008. His work is internationally collected, and he has participated in artist residency programs in Italy, Romania, France, New York, and Massachusetts. He is also a robotics engineer at Boston Dynamics where he is currently working on the Spot quadruped robot and he is the father of a precocious toe-headed baby boy.

 

Winter / Spring 2021 Reading List

  1. “Colonialism Definition and Meaning: Collins English Dictionary.” Collins Dictionary, www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/English/colonialism.

  2. Garcia, Sandra E. “Where Did BIPOC Come From?” New York Times, 17 June, 2020.

  3. Copeland, Huey, et al. “A Questionnaire on Decolonization.” October, vol. 174, 2020, pp. 3–125., doi:10.1162/octo_a_00410

  4. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is not a metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp.1–40.

  5. Tarmy, James. “Crypto Investor Moves On to Picasso After $69 Million Beeple NFT Miss.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 1 Apr. 2021, 1:47pm, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-01/guy-who-lost-out-on-69-million-beeple-nft-moved-on-to-picasso.

  6. Brown, Abram. “Beeple NFT Sells For $69.3 Million, Becoming Most-Expensive Ever.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 11 Mar. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/03/11/beeple-art-sells-for-693-million-becoming-most-expensive-nft-ever/

  7. Cunningham, John M.. "Ai Weiwei". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Aug. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ai-Weiwei. Accessed 2 April 2021.

  8. Staniszewski, Mary Anne. Believing is Seeing. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

  9. Mercer, Kobena. Travel Et See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s. Duke University Press, 2016.

  10. HERBERT, FRANK. DUNE. ACE BOOKS, 2021. 

  11. HERBERT, FRANK. DUNE MESSIAH. ACE BOOKS, 2021. 

  12. HERBERT, FRANK. CHILDREN OF DUNE. ACE BOOKS, 2021.