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I love meeting people. It’s not that I’m vivacious and fun-loving, of course. I just know that there are some really fascinating folks out there, and I want to find as many of them as I can before my time’s up. We’ll cross one more name off of the list right now: Greg Brotherton.
Who is Greg Brotherton?
Greg Brotherton lives in exile from his own personality.
He can be found on a remote island across an ocean of considerable confusion. I hear he is building a boat.
His body lives and works in Los Angeles. It does animation for movies, builds dangerous machinery, wakes the neighbors hammering out metal sculptures at 2:am, paints, draws, and tries to set a good example for his 3 year old son by remaining very calm and smiling a lot
Minitron
Our mutual friend Zach describes your work as a motion graphics artist admiringly, almost reverently. Your metal sculptures, which require advanced technical skills to realize complex personal visions, reinforce the impression that you are an exceptionally gifted artist. Where does your creativity originate?
I’m not sure. It’s a place that exists slightly outside of language, which makes descriptions problematic.
We use words and analogies to compress our extremely complex environment into an understandable narrative.
Creativity for me is more about embracing complexity in an effort to pick up combinations outside of that narrative.
I try to see the world without context and my brain tries to force a descriptive framework on it.
I think creativity lies partly in that struggle, and partly in my need to explore.
Salvador Dali developed a self-induced psychosis he called Critical Paranoia for remaining in a creative state.
I love the sensational aspect of Dali’s Critical Paranoia, but just by giving it a name he compressed away all the other types of perfectly good insanity.
The Rise of Discord
Is your creative talent a blessing, a curse, or something entirely different?
Its an adventure.
Adventures have risks, and obstacles, and can kill you, but they are also a rush. They have the big payoffs… usually after a lengthy process of no payoffs.
I’m not going to pretend that inhabiting my particular chemistry is always fun, it generated a lot of frustration and anger when I was younger.
No doubt much of my talent is built on compensating for my unique chemistry.
Lucifer’s Fall
You work with metal and stone – cold materials – to create robots, weapons, and mystical creatures – dark subjects. Talk about the tone of your art.
I choose materials that are inherently difficult to work with. It gives me a steady flow of problems to solve, an incremental challenge and reward approach that makes long projects more bearable. But yes there is an emotional context to metal and stone that is attractive also.
My figurative work is defiant, heroic and slightly sardonic, but it’s also my graphic representation of beauty. There is a tension between the the streamlined and cubistic form that I find exciting. The pieces are meant to be emotive, beautiful and dangerous.
The weapons are more social satire. It was a process of extending the design of existing products into what they were always meant to be, gleeful implements of death. I was tapping into the post atomic need for superiority and protection that, ironically, found its way into the domain of the 1950’s homemaker. I love to work with cultural icons, whether it is a vacuum cleaner or a mythological deity. They are the buzz words of reality’s language.
The illustrations on stone are experimental for me, the tone is primarily set by my subconscious since I stare at the patterns and try not to dictate a subject. The images I come up with are usually a complete surprise.
It’s really entertaining to work this way, it frees you up from thinking about what you are trying to do, and second guessing your approach.
My thanks to Greg for sharing his work. Please be sure to visit brotron.com to see more of his art.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Show Us Yours, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
2 Comments
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Brotron!
Glad to see you sharing your work here, my man. I can picture you writing your responses to Yorkie’s questions with a wry smile as you listen to the weirdest techno music the world has ever known.
Keep up the amazing work, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Brotron - Thanks for sharing your amazing art! I love it all and would really like to see it in person…hope you have a show coming up soon.