This is the fascinating story of New Brunswick artist David Brooks who taught visual arts for 30 years, went into contemplative pandemic isolation in 2020, retired in 2022 and has just emerged with a solo exhibition of compelling environmental intensity.

His paintings layer the drifts of many contemporary photographs of plastic garbage with images from the crowded, thickly painted works of the Baroque Art era.

“David’s large-scale acrylic paintings layer abstract forms with haunting references to both natural and manmade worlds,” says Kathryn Basham, Owner/Curator of Bright & Brine Fine Art Gallery in Moncton, N.B., where the exhibition runs through July 5.

Drawing from 17th-century Dutch and French painting traditions, environmental waste, and photography, the work blurs boundaries between eras and materials.

Each canvas has a kind of beneath-the-surface quality, Basham says, “evoking buried histories and hidden debris, both literal and cultural. The longer you look, the more elusive the meaning becomes.”

Brooks concerned for the environment

Brooks says photography, art history and a deep concern for the state of the natural environment have all shaped the work, most of it created since his retirement from teaching in 2022.

Dancing into the Anthropocene explores the relationship between humanity and the changing planet, the Anthropocene referring to a geological period defined by human influence on earth. There’s an essay about it to accompany the exhibition, online here.

The exhibition brings together pieces that started during the pandemic lockdown but the inspiration goes farther back, relating to his own photography. Brooks was looking through shots taken as far back as 10 years ago, of reflective surfaces showing the intricate merging of images.

Brooks knew he wanted to use old paintings as a source material, specifically the big, dramatic, thickly entwined images in Baroque works.

He started layering those paintings with images from other sources, including photographs of plastic beach garbage. “For a person long concerned with the environment, these images seemed an easy entrance point for expressing maybe some displeasure with plastic in the environment,” he says

Intense imagery and deft layering

Close ups of the paintings show how deftly the layering has been done (see David Brooks’ website and Instagram). The photo below shows the intensity of the imagery that lines the studio surfaces.

Basham says this is the first public showing of his paintings, “and the response has blown me away.” The gallery notes 20% of all sales will be donated to the Ecology Action Center (Halifax).

David Brooks was a NSCAD Fine Arts graduate 1989, and a Visual Arts Teacher in New Brunswick for 33 years.

David Brooks website, here.

His Instagram here.

Bright and Brine Gallery, here.