Pegan Brooke makes paintings inspired by her studio environs in Bolinas, California and follows a parallel practice of creating video/poems shot by the Aven River in Pont-Aven, France. She also maintains a studio in San Francisco.
Light falling on water as visual metaphor for the fleeting quality of experience is a central theme of the work. She relates her work to nature and architecture in her desire, through the paintings, to create a space for the viewer to contemplate. Brooke has exhibited extensively, and her work is owned by the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Des Moines Art Museum; the Berkeley Art Museum (BAMPFA); the Swig Collection, San Francisco; and the Anderson Collection, Menlo Park, California. Her work has been widely reviewed, including in Art in America, The New York Times, Artweek, Examiner.com, and Art Ltd. Magazine.
Pegan Brooke Statement
Certain places and circumstances exert an undeniable impulse to make art inspired by them in order to understand what they might mean. My paintings are inspired by the experiences of sustained reflection upon the Aven River in Pont Aven, France, the Pacific Ocean near my home in Bolinas, California and the snow and river in Ketchum, Idaho. I am awed by the beauty of light falling on water and snow. This visual phenomena is a perfect natural metaphor for the ever changing flux in which we make our lives. I love things one can only see for an instant; they shock us into contemplation, thought and change.
