Today we’d like to introduce you to Brennan Maine.
Brennan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve always been a creator. From as long as I can remember, I have been drawing, cutting things out of paper, experimenting, and playing. I feel lucky because I never lost that curiosity of exploration. I was blessed with parents who encouraged my artistic interests, so I never had resistance when I chose art as my major. I went to undergraduate at Allegheny College and chose studio art as my major with a focus in printmaking. In school, I had the opportunity to explore the printmaking process and all its variations that helped me to think of creating prints in layers and pushing out bulk work. I’ve always enjoyed making art at a very fast pace and am capable of pushing out bodies of work in a short period of time. Adrenaline helps to get me there and I’ve learned that my dry spells are my research phases where I am gathering inspiration for the next project. I took an elective digital art class where I learned to play around and create compositions in Photoshop and that is where the foundation of what I do now came from.
Matisse has always been one of my inspirations and in particular his cut-outs from later in his life where arthritis prevented him from painting. I love the minimalism of his work during this period and what he is able to convey in the simplest of shapes and imperfect forms. I always had several of his prints around my bedroom growing up like the “Tree of Life,” “the Fall of Icarus” and “Woman with Amphora and Pomegranates” and always wanted to make art that paid tribute to his work. It was from there that I began “collecting” images of paper, cardboard, wallpaper, and rust in different textures, colors off of google searches and brought them into Photoshop. Much like printmaking, I lay my papers in different layers and create my compositions by carving, drawing, copy and pasting, playing with the saturation and opacity of how each layer interacts with another to create my work.
When I first started this, it was an economical approach to creating. I was fresh out of college, desperate to create, but didn’t have the means to buy a bunch of paper to experiment what may have been a passing interest. What I find compelling and different about the way in which I create is that people have no idea how I do it even when I explain it. They are often surprised to know that it is digital art because there is the illusion of texture. I also enjoy the flexibility with where my art can live on a surface and how the “original” is a file that lives with me.
It wasn’t until lockdown 2020 where I really began to show what I was creating with people through Instagram. I received a lot of good reviews and began to print my art at Fedex and ship them around the United States and even to some foreign countries like Australia and the Netherlands. From there I made a website and online shop. I have worked with local framers to make one of a kind pieces to sell and have begun teaching workshops. It’s really exciting to be exploring my passion in this way and I am looking forward to what is to come from this. My absolute favorite part beyond creating art is the way it connects people; what they see in a particular print, how it relates to them, inspires them and moves them is such a gift. This reminds me that as an artist you are not in control of what your work may mean to someone else, your job is only to create because it fascinates you.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been a smooth road and I am grateful for it because then the periods of smooth sailing wouldn’t feel so special. I’ve struggled with depression, lack of motivation, loss of inspiration, figuring out tedious details like adding sales taxes to my website, how to actually ship larger work, damaged pieces, lost files and so on. But I love it all and whenever I do come back to my work it’s almost as if the universe rewards me for it in some magical way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an artist. I am known for my digital art that I sell for now as prints through my website brennanalexa.com. I am most proud of all my work because it just inspires me to continue to create more and builds a connection to those that enjoy it. I have files and files and then piles of work that are the progress pieces that inspire finished works that I never share. What makes me stand apart from others is that no one is creating digital art the way I do yet.
How do you define success?
I have been trying to answer this for myself this past year and I am not sure if I have a final answer. I am trying to detach my mind from the idea of success connecting to money, but I am an American living in a capitalistic society and I need money to fund all my adventures and comfort in life. I think for now how I will answer this question in finding success is knowing that I am able to live a good and rich life filled with love. That I took risks where it they were necessary and stayed put when it was time to rest. That I balanced loving my family, and friends, as well as my independence well and that I leave this life knowing I tried everything I wanted to with no regrets.
Contact Info:
- Website: brennanalexa.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/__brennanalexa__/?hl=en
Image Credits
Kenna Reed Shing02
