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Counter-Signs: the paintings of Tom Brand. Art review by Robert Kamezcura


	Peak Performance by Tom Brand. Click to enlarge.

"It is not just good ideas that make art. It is how those ideas are made out of colors, brush strokes and composition, and the many elements that make up a painting,” says painter Tom Brand. “That is where the poetry comes into art."

Brand’s paintings mix urban and nature-based imagery, abstract with subtle references to the shapes of skyscrapers, bridges, city graphics, clouds, trees and lakes. His work suggests rather than defines images and makes them float in a free fantasia of subtle color and flowing fluid space. An element of manifest destiny flavors his work: a muscular aura of open spaces filled with a counterpoint of natural and man-made forms, with the breadth of the great 19th century romantics Cole and Church and 21st century urbanity. Looking into Brand’s paintings is like gazing upon the world from the tail of a kite where everything below seems bejeweled and fantastic.

His style combines an interest in dynamic elements (which owes some lineage to the Italian futurists) and the intense luminous color of transparent glazes of oil over colored grounds achieved via a technique borrowed from medieval masters like Van Eyck and Van Der Weyden. Indeed, Brand places a high value on the craft behind his artwork, mixing his own varnishes and glazes, making his own frames and generally working from scratch to get exactly the effects he wants.

"The Music of Mozart is in the notes. There is no Mozart without well-ordered, expressive notes,” says Brand, who complains that much contemporary art has left universal truths by the wayside. "I see many messages in the art of today referring to environment, politics, social justice et al. Subject matter is all, it seems, and it dominates the aesthetics of the work. But when you look at art of the past, often times the subject matter is obscure, but the work is enjoyed for its aesthetic qualities alone.


Tribute to Ralph Meyer by Tom Brand. Click to Enlarge.

“Too often, art one sees as ‘contemporary’ doesn't even seem to nod in the direction that most people would recognize as art,” says Brand. “There seems to be a shameless tugging at the guilt and coarser sensibilities of other artists. Revolutions are sometimes necessary, but of what kind? If one throws out everything, then you are left with nothing.

“Ultimately all confusion of value proceeds from the same source: neglect of the intrinsic significance of the medium. The craft in too much of today's art is in a poor second place."

Brand has been a part of the Chicago arts community for over 50 years. Growing up in a strict, conservative family in Indianapolis, he knew he wanted to be an artist from the time he was 10. When he came of age, he moved to Chicago and then did a stint in the Navy in the wake of WWII. The G.I. Bill funded Brand’s courses of study at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois alongside such contemporaries as Ellen Lanyon, Robert Cohen and Leon Golub.

"I didn't have respect for the teachers,” says Brand. “I learned more by wandering the galleries and studying the paintings of the masters in the galleries of the Art Institute." During his student years, he worked with Exhibition Momentum, an organization that was formed to protest the Art Institute’s policy of banning student work from the Artists of Vicinity exhibit and was co-chair of the organization in 1953. “We had jurors like Alfred Barr and Jackson Pollack who were more notable than the Art Institute ever had,” he says.

Click here to read "Defining Art," an essay by Tom Brand

Brand’s activity in the Chicago art scene has continued from the 1940s through today, with a recent exhibit at the Gallery of the Edgebrook Branch of the Chicago Public Library. He has been an ongoing promoter of art and artists in the Chicago area. In 1968, he discovered "outsider" artist Joseph Yoakum exhibiting in a south-side coffeehouse and introduced him to the art community. In the 1970s, he helped found the Chicago Artists' Coalition, a service organization for artists. After moving to Indiana, he served as chair of the Area Artists Association at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts and is currently secretary of the board.

In addition to art, Brand pursues ongoing interests in civil rights and social activism, automotive racing, and restoring and sailing classic sailboats — he is a founding member of the Chicagoland Sports Car Club and the Heritage Boat Club. For many years, Brand ran a professional print shop to support his family, and he handled the printing for the “Hairy Who” artists and comic books, as well as the newly born Hyde Park Art Center and the civil rights posters of Billie Morrow Jackson. Currently, Brand resides in the Indiana Dunes with his wife Carole Stodder, who is also an artist.

— Robert Kamezcura

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