BILL BRODY artist

The measure of art is how successful it is as an agent to alter and enrich the viewer's capacity to experience the universe. Art is supposed to cast the scales from your eyes and enable you to see the world anew. It is not about pretty pictures and social climbing. My art is about authentic experience transformed into signs and pathways to encourage experience of a wider and wilder world.

Painting in the wilderness has become a significant focus of my artistic life. I’ve been going out into the backcountry of Alaska for 25 years with the goal of representing something of what it is like to be immersed in that wilderness. My artwork serves as a tool for me to recall those special times. I have taken more than 60 extended trips dedicated to this purpose.

Amidst the clamor of humanity en masse, shy truth hides; in wilderness the truth comes out to play. Solitude needs to be combined with an outside focus, else it is navel-gazing. The wilderness is my cornerstone. And when I’m in my studio alone, I recall the relative purity of the wilderness experience and try to attain that same clarity that I find in wild places.

The Alaskan wilderness is my home of innermost longing.

breezes and blowing clouds
skies of aching blue and wind-dancing grasses
of lichen and rock, moss, water and mountains
the smell of sweet vetch and labrador tea
willow and minute wildflowers
blast, gale, and zephyr
the swirling advance of howling storm
grunt-sweating terror of high places, rock falls
and the rolling walk of grizzlies.

As anything to do with the landscape, my art is about the perception, representation and contemplation of space.

Please look at a Painter in the Wilderness, a Google Docs presentation, for some more information about how and why I paint in wild places. Your comments are welcome.