ARTIST STATEMENT
I locate myself through the echo of a multi-layered, non-linear orbit of time. I reach for resonance, spirit, closeness, kinship. This is most recognizable to me as memory, but it reaches much deeper—toward the pulse of the earth. Grounded, I construct paintings that feel like a poem. Each mark is both a tether and an offering, an invention that challenges boundaries of space, tension, ease, and hierarchy.
In these abstractions, I seek the quality of light and atmosphere that make a place known. Shadows that are a mark of specific time, a trace of circumstance and materiality. I ponder the edge of colors, how they dull or fizz in conversation, when can they hold quiet? When can they expand and stratify time?
I am intrigued by beauty, not as a frivolous jurisdiction but as our means of liberation. Kant theorized that all thought and judgment are constrained, except in our estimation of beauty. Beauty becomes a liminal space where the brain can participate in uninhibited “free play,” which calls us, surprises us, and expands the capacity of our being.
Painting has exceptional space within it. Instead of language’s precise construction, painting is guided by the senses, intuition, and instinct. It asks to be experienced fully and immediately. I produce work as I grapple with deep political and ecological despair, depression, and numbing fear. As I paint, my mind quiets, space blooms around me as heaviness refracts and softens. As my grit fractures, light and beauty become an incubator to practice the vulnerable and revolutionary act of hope and healing.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Luce Wren Brandt is an oil painter and writer from Salem and Ipswich Massachusetts. She received her B.A from Mount Holyoke College in Environmental Science and Studio Art, and her MFA in Painting and drawing from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Luce has had solo exhibitions in Chicago, Massachusetts, and Maine.
© Luce Wren Brandt