Art of Action: Hands on the Split

Vermont’s Synthetic Beauty

Living in a culture that has largely submitted its creative will up to popular film, television, DVDs, iPhones and facebook makes the unique language of painting especially important as a visceral means to provoke the imagination of its viewers. The Art of Action Project has been an opportunity to help keep painting relevant through its engagement of contemporary social and visual realities. In order to develop an intimate knowledge of weirdly familiar sights like a McDonald’s Tubular Playland, giant wind turbines, utility trucks or jet exhaust streaking the sky, the paintings in this series were all completed on site. One of the particular challenges of doing paintings in this manner is keeping pace with the chaotic and frenzied movements of people, vehicles, and commercial clutter in order to achieve a poetic order within the works. In striving to reinvent these places I have developed an adroit use of foam paint rollers, which produce a quality of mark and porous texture that expresses the synthetic nature of the subject matter that I’ve interpreted. I hope that in creating an exquisite aesthetic out of new and incongruous forms that my paintings will help bring soul and dignity to these elements that increasingly impact Vermont’s landscape and people, and are typically not depicted in paint.

David Brewster, July 2009

The Art of Action exhibition is touring Vermont click here for a list of dates and locations

Completed Paintings

About the Paintings

Marriage: American Split
In this small and intimate state of Vermont, nature is like a church and is one of the main community centers. The controversy over same-sex marriage represents a split between Vermonters and beyond. In this drawing, technical symbols of Vermont’s native logging industry awkwardly embrace and contrast same-sex couples. The sylvan, pastoral church environment sets the stage for a wedding debate about the current bifurcation of class, education and wealth that are the real issues that challenge the future of the State.

Enslaved: Logs and Chains
Essential aspects of Vermont’s ecology exist in the State’s forests and the renewed focus on sustainable ecology is the subject of major controversy in the State’s future. This narrative is a warning for premature logging as a major problem: the quality of unseasoned, small wood is quite low and the plywood and luon board that this wood often becomes are toxic building materials. That which we reap is forged in chains. This subject was influenced by Winslow Homer’s painting The Two Guides, a similar 1880’s logging scene. I was struck by how one of Winslow Homer’s figures wears a red shirt with a black heart and in my figurative depiction a logger wears a t-shirt with a black beer bottle.

Poverty: Nugget Mania
It is depressing to see humanity succumb to dead fried foods, cheaply-made consumer goods, lifeless bright lights and cold plastic signage, but many Vermonters are forced to patronize these grotesque establishments due to economic realities. Expensive food co-ops in towns like Brattleboro are an anomaly, not Wal-Mart, Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s. In this drawing, I confront the monstrous seduction of fast food and the ways that this franchise encourages ill-health and poverty for many Vermonters. It is not only a financial and nutritional poverty, but a cultural one throughout the State, because healthy foods are not bought locally. McDonald’s symbolizes an exportation of resources in a state that is capable of producing excellent local food.

Climate: Hot and Cold
The conflicting color harmony between ultramarine blue and red-orange suggests that given the extreme and erratic climactic conditions prevalent today, forest fires could just as easily become a major crisis in the State’s future as have the recent ice storms.

Sustainability: Mountain Ridge Wind Turbines
After exploring up close the impressive eleven wind turbines situated on the mountain ridge in Searsburg, Vermont I became excited by the State’s increasing reliance on clean energy from indigenous sources. In this painting I present a dramatic portrait of a wind power facility amidst the presence of wildlife. Jet-black crows are contrasted against the brilliantly lit windmill blades as they are stirred into flight.

Marriage: American Split (through Wind Turbine Shaft)
The surreal compositional element presented by the wind turbine shaft directs the viewer through the cylindrical dark space to find the silhouetted kiss of two men (grooms). It is not out of context in our culture for two men or two women to be celebrating their love in the dark shadows of society. Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is near regarding the same-sex marriage debate.

Climate: Spurred into Action
With global warming Vermonters are going to be faced with an increasing number of natural emergencies like the recent ice storm that devastated Windham County, Vermont. In this painting Vermont’s Highway Department workers, volunteer firefighters, and a host of utility trucks are seen working around the clock to restore downed power and open miles of obstructed roadways.

Ice Storm Hair Trigger
The extraordinary ice build-up on tree limbs during the Dec 12, 2008 ice storm created a precarious scenario where every silent moment triggered the crashing and breaking noise of trees. In this painting, the steeply-pitched rooflines of a farmhouse are echoed by the similar angles of downed trees which override this human domain.

McDonald’s Tubular Playland
The lurid colored tubes linked with globes which comprise McDonald’s Playland have always appeared to me like a cancerous colon. Incidentally, a week after I painted a McDonald’s Tubular Playland, this very ensemble featured in my painting was dismantled when a syringe was found by a child sliding through the tubes.

Poverty: Nugget Mania and Ploughman

“Is my team ploughing
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive”
– A.E. Housman, from A Shropshire Lad

The indomitable presence of McDonald’s tramples our land, the land we used to plough, the fertile land that kept all humans nourished and alive. This reality has uprooted us and has become an urgent search for where and how we can become grounded again.

McDonald’s Team Ploughman
McDonald’s appears like Darth Vader’s fortress alongside a Vermont ploughman whose back is turned to us. A swath of light rolls from out of the sky gently bathing the farmer.

Mountain Ridge Flying Knives
The current controversy over wind power seems ironic since civilizations have benefited from this engineering concept for centuries. The first windmills probably appeared in eastern Persia around the 9th century and were used to grind corn and draw up water. This painting demonstrates the elegant sight of blades juggled through the sky like flying knives, not unlike the painting by Rembrandt van Rijn, The Mill.

Mountain Ridge Wind Turbine
After exploring up close the impressive eleven wind turbines situated on the mountain ride in Searsburg, Vermont I became excited by the state’s increasing reliance on clean energy from indigenous sources. In this painting I present a dramatic portrait of a wind-power facility amidst the presence of wildlife. Jet-black crows are contrasted against the brilliantly lit windmill blades as they are stirred into flight.

Hands on the Split: The Proposal

For my suite of paintings, Hands On The Split, I have created a vision for works with a tight interrelation. All the paintings are inseparable from one another – both artistically and thematically – just as the arms of the State House chandelier work together to connect the future of Vermont.

From my interviews with my fellow townspeople, I can clearly sense that the divisions, the split, between Vermont’s peoples are both strongly and sharply felt. And since Vermonters by and large have a tough
and rugged character, they have a hands-on approach to survival, and I wish to take that ethic and apply it to exposing and beginning to heal these splits.

The aim of my art is to bring people together to talk about these social, political, racial, class, orientation, and experiential issues that we as a society are often discouraged from (and afraid of) addressing together. This is an important and essential time for us to confront our challenges head-on, and hands-on. Within this booklet are the six paintings and seven portrait sketches of Halifax residents that I have created to address these interlacing themes, as well as some of the art historical references that have influenced my artistic approaches.

Studies and Sketches