James Brooks

James Brooks was an American abstract painter and winner of the Logan Medal of the Arts. The artist was friends with Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner on Long Island. He married artist Charlotte Park in 1947.  Brooks was one of the first abstract expressionists to use staining on unprimed canvas as an integral technique.
 

"My painting starts with a complication on the canvas surface, done with as much spontaneity and as little memory as possible. This then exists as the subject. It is as strange as a new still life arrangement as confusing as any unfamiliar situation. It demands a long period of acquaintance during which it is observed both innocently and shrewdly. Then it speaks, quietly, with its own peculiar logic. Between painting and painter a dialogue develops which leads rapidly to the bare confrontation of two personalities. At first a rhythm of the painting is modifies, then a chain of formal reactions sets in that carries painting and painter through violent shifts of emphasis and into sudden unfamiliar meanings.  At some undetermined point the subject becomes the object, existing independently as a painting."

Untitled 1948 James Brooks Oil on Canvas

Y 1952 James Brooks Oil on Canvas