Emotion Provides Information
September 1 - current
3 Austin artists explore their processes of creating art during fatherhood, during sobriety and during a global pandemic. Introducing the work of Russell Brxwn, Blair Gallacher and Carl Smith.
Russell Brxwn
Russell Brxwn is a visual and installation artist whose work incorporates patterning lines he refers to as TWIGS. These lines to Russell are meditative, and they help his hand to lose tight control and shut off any restrictions caused by an overthinking mind. The spontaneity of these lines allow him to create shapes and structures in a more concise manner, really revealing the substance of an image.
With identity, pop culture literature, and composition still at the foreground of his mind, Russell explores controversial topics with his installation work to push the boundaries of society.
Blair Gallacher
Gallacher’s work serves a conglomerate of purposes centered around one principle. Through her paintings, the artist shares her reality as a synesthete.
Synesthesia is a condition in which one sense triggers another sense. To Gallacher, colors hold conceptual meaning. Colors are emotions, people, music, and energy — they inform experience. Through creating, Gallacher brings this thought process into a physical dimension.
The works serve as portals, transporting the viewer into a certain moment or emotional state. Although abstract in nature, Gallacher’s pieces are formed to represent specific subjects and themes.
Interpretation varies according to the viewer. Each person has their own set of experiences and ways of understanding the world; therefore, these images conjure up a spectrum of thoughts and feelings.
Gallacher uses painting as a way to explore and understand puzzling dualities. Often featuring vibrant colors, quirky shapes, and child-like marks, the playful first impression of these pieces ultimately reveals murky complexity.
The artist tests several clashing perspectives, including:
Innocence and naiveté.
Bliss and chaos.
Fascination and disgust.
Pride and vanity.
Freedom and fear of the unknown.
By acquiescing to the friction of these concepts, Gallacher encourages herself and her viewers to push their colloquial musings to the surface.
IG: @blairgallacherart
Carl Smith
Carl Smith is an abstract landscape painter who lives and works in East Austin, Texas. His paintings explore composition and texture through the use of heavy impastos and aggressive brushwork, spontaneously creating paintings with an emphasis on form and structure.
Carl has made art from a very early age and took all the public school art classes available to him. Growing up in poverty made it all but impossible for Carl to pursue a direct course of study. Leaving the rough inner city of Houston of the 1980’s Carl moved to Austin in the 1990’s; a short career as a jazz musician ensued before he dedicated himself fully to the world of painting.
From 2010-2011, Carl studied studio painting and drawing at the Dougherty Arts School and the Laguna Gloria Art School while also studying privately with local Austin artist Philip Trussell. In the course of his studies he dabbled in different styles of painting before deciding to focus on abstract landscapes. He feels abstraction places emphasis on emotion and direct creative decision-making resulting in unique paintings. He also makes paintings of tax forms.
Having explored many painting styles he eventually settled on one that allows for improvisation and action-oriented execution in which he can engage as much of his creative abilities as possible. Carl seeks to make the act of creation central to the content of his paintings.
Carl is a member of Imagine Art - an east side art gallery that serves artists with mental or physical disabilities.
