Couples

What makes couples stay together? I do some wacky matchmaking in these paintings, pairing odd, opposite, or thoughtful imagined partners.

First Meeting

Love

Thing We Live With

The Library

Belle and The Ghost

End of the Relationship

Exhibition

Artist Talk

Brenna George gives an artist talk about her 2017 series of oil paintings called Couples. She shares her inspiration, thought process, and painting techniques. She lets you into her tiny hallway studio and holds up some of her work to talk about. She reveals what series of art led up to this work and the art series that followed this work.

Making the Art

One-a-Day.

Couples was a one-a-day project spanning 73 days of making one 9” x 12” oil painting each day. Many of the paintings were reworked later and some are still the fresh fast one-a-day style.

No More Metaphors.

My project before Couples was Romantic Botanicals, portraits of the plants in my yard made into romance novel like covers. I thought why am I abstracting using plants, I can just paint romance using figures. I can match-make imagined scenarios - no more metaphors. I said no more metaphors out loud for a week, it was very freeing at the time. This is how I came to work on the Couples project.

The Process.

I followed a free-flowing process of matchmaking. First, I searched for images on the internet and paired them in digital collages. For example, I matched Severus Snape with Snow White, Geodude with the moon and Mr. Dress-up with the Fairy Godmother. I used these digital collages as inspiration for my oil paintings, exploring imagined narratives that sprung up with these unlikely couples. When I organized them for exhibition I discovered the trajectory of a relationship: first meeting, love, things we live with and the end. There were also two side eddies: libraries and Belle and the Ghost.

Lots of ideas - Make lots of paintings.

Couples is a series of work of many small paintings making a whole installation. This multiples approach to painting allows me to express range of developing ideas. I have a lot of ideas that want to get out. Multiples also encourages the physicality of paint because speed over perfection is a goal. Showing my human marks, thin, thick, fast or layered is letting the viewer see me in the moment.