Brooke Lanier

Artist's Statement

Though my paintings address a wide variety of subject matter across various bodies of work, they are united by common tendencies: a search for the sublime as well as an appreciation for the beauty of subtle details.

The sublime as described by philosopher Immanuel Kant can be experienced through the expansive, vast simplicity that inspires a sense of quiet admiration, perhaps accompanied by melancholia. Beauty may be found things that inspire joy or delight, in intricate, small details. With these ideals in mind, I try to share experiences and places with my viewers which are meaningful to me. My paintings of landscapes and swimming pools are places to fill with your thoughts, to feel the comfort of being small compared with an expansive space.

As someone who grew up amidst forests and lakes, I feel a primal need to feel small against a big sky. It is restorative to go to a peaceful place and contemplate the beautiful subtlety of colors and patterns of light in water and plants and sky. I make paintings of my favorite places and find this evokes an empathetic response in that people “recognize” these locations as sites significant to their own biographies, even though the actual geographic locations are nowhere near each other.

Conversely, my paintings of brick walls leave you nothing to look at but that which is directly in front of your face. They are meditations on the details of the crumbling facades of the buildings in Philadelphia, the physical history of a place. These paintings are constructed in the same way the buildings are made, layer by layer. Mortar, brick, plaster, and paint are built up and scraped down to reveal the history of their making. They contain fragments and dust from derelict and demolished buildings of Fishtown, Kensington, and West Philly.

In a city where many people work in windowless offices and go home to neighborhoods where potential green space is covered in concrete, landscape paintings serve as artificial windows into places we’d rather be.

As an artist, I strive to create work that will encourage contemplation and greater awareness of mundane beauty. By paying close attention to details, they become important. By sharing them through art, viewers translate this mindfulness to their own lives.