Wisconsin-native Breehan James has spent the past 10 years depicting her home state and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. A professor at Boston University, James says the works of 19th-century Nordic landscape painters have greatly influenced her own compositions. Here, she discusses how painting from life is liberating, the benefits of immersing oneself in nature, and why the wilds of Wisconsin always refresh her spirit.
Read MoreBreehan James at Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program - December, 2014
Breehan James has been hard at work at in her New York studio space provided by the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Breehan James is one of seventeen artists chosen from more than one thousand applicants for this prestigious program.
Read MoreBreehan James & Trent Miller in Shepherd Express - June, 2014
At Tory Folliard Gallery, two new exhibitions hold court beginning May 30. Native daughter of Wisconsin, Yale Master of Fine Arts and assistant professor at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design Breehan James presents “Way of the Wilderness,” a study of favorite locations in her family’s Wisconsin hunting camp and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. With tree-reflecting brooks and forest floors crocheted by fallen leaves, James’ canvases capture the repetitive patterns of nature and instill in the viewer a similar meditative calm.
Trent Miller’s exhibition makes a humble request: “Meet Me at the Edge of the World.” Miller is already a step ahead when it comes to breaking out of the artistic mainstream, seeing as he uses Emery Blagdon’s Healing Machine as a visual point of departure. Outsider artist extraordinaire, Blagdon spent 36 years putting together more than 400 paintings, baroque wire mobiles and found items into a surreal, shed-sized installation that he believed to have curative powers. Miller favors similarly carnival-esque colors and hypnotic structures.
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