SOJOURN
by Nathan Van Brunt
January 24 – March 27, 2022
Rochester painter Nathan Van Brunt presents a series of paintings exploring internal conflict, collective trauma, and tenuous resolution from the societal turmoil in the last two years.
Artist Statement
The pandemic and exposure of deep social injustice significantly affected us all, forcing most into isolation and intense introspection. This series of paintings explore internal conflict, collective trauma and societal divisions. What has this time revealed about ourselves, personally and collectively? How will we cope and find a way forward together?
These abstract paintings are an artistic response to many of these struggles and questions. In different ways and through different lenses, the paintings explore how we have dealt with the threat of a pervasive and invisible virus that continues to disrupt our lives and force us into waves of isolation, then tenuous connection. In the midst of microscopic battles as the pandemic persists, societal divisions have amplified these themes of togetherness/separateness and forced us to evaluate everything we knew about the ‘before’ time. And how do we wrestle with these life-altering questions while everyday life during a pandemic is so mentally fatiguing?
In turn, these works hide and reveal, depict fracturing and healing. Some feel chaotic and indecipherable, while others show splashes of intense color or deep darkness lying just under the surface. The use of color, transparency, layering, and harsh or soft lines convey the various responses to distancing, safety, community, home, pain, and hope. Ultimately, this exhibition asks the viewer to consider their own cycles of emotion and observations of societal and personal fracturing, and ask how we might find peace in being honest about our collective journey.
About the Artist
Nathan Van Brunt is a painter who grew up in rural Minnesota and currently lives in Rochester, Minnesota. He received his art education from Bethel University in St. Paul , MN. Drawn toward the mysterious interplay of color, shape, texture and line, his work aims simply to elicit emotion in the viewer.
