Artist: Brent Foreman
Title: Oceanic #1
Edition Size: Original
Medium: Acrylic on Sheet Metal
Image Dimensions: 20"x20"
Retail Price: $1,400 (framed)
About the Art: Acrylic paint on sheet metal
About the Artist:
I always knew that I was going to be an artist. Not everyone can say that they knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. I did. While the other kids were busy eating their crayons and glue, I was feverishly coloring outside the lines and making macaroni masterpieces. Creating just made sense to me.
When I took my first painting class as a Sophomore in college I knew that I was in trouble. I knew that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, regardless of the “starving artist” stereotype. The human figure and all its complexities held no real secrets from me. Still lifes were a series of sweeping motions in space. My only real inhibition was how anyone could actually implement artistic knowledge into a lifelong career. No one I’d ever known was a professional artist. It was as if somehow the noble pursuit of professional artist had stopped in the 19th Century: an antiquated idea with no modern usefulness. Luckily for me, that’s just the kind of challenge I like.
Through a series of fortunate mistakes and happy accidents I was able to continue my efforts. The latest conception of my work has been an abstract style with bits of information flowing throughout that nod back to my representational roots. I always try to put myself in the viewer’s perspective to see if there is a visual “cue” to draw from. When I find that cue I embellish. I include the viewer in a laborious process of defining and re-defining what is important to this piece. I’ve been known to start a canvas one way and spontaneously flip the canvas 180 degrees if something more interesting is happening upside down. I will use crayons, technical pencils, or even comic book pages if I think it’s going to get a desired result. The truth is that I never know how a piece is going to end up. That’s the beauty and excitement of art to me: the unplanned and unexplored. I invite you, the viewer, to share the journey with me.