Texas Tech University

The Painted Story, acrylics by Brian Brogan

On exhibit until March 11


Born in Brooklyn, Brian Brogan has lived and traveled in more than 20 countries over the past twenty years. He now makes his home in the West of Ireland with his artist wife Jessie Skillen. For Brian, discovering the act of painting was both an epiphany and a revelation in his quest to combine his poetry and shamanic interactions with nature. His large acrylic canvases show bold iconography that is both personal and archetypal. His art is inspired by dreams, visions, and indigenous traditions that celebrate humanity's connection to the natural world. Animals, spirits, and spirit creatures, mystical landscapes and ritual healings, are all rendered in a vibrant palette. Brogan's use of color enlivens his paintings with a shamanic energy, and even though the characters and places are part of an ever-widening personal cosmology, there is also something universal about them. His figures—be they deer, birds, bees, rabbits, dogs, or human forms—all feel ancient and yet familiar, calling to mind the Yei spirits of the Navajo and the Kachina spirits of Pueblo cosmology robed in colors reminiscent of the yarn paintings of the Huichol people of Mexico.

Brian writes, "Much of my imagery is dreamlike, and comes to me in dreams, visions, and other liminal states of consciousness where the material world meets the spirit world. I am attracted to dreamlike places where tropes merge, meanings shift, and past, present, and future fuse. At these junctures space can become time, and time can turn into space."

Brogan has exhibited his paintings throughout the U.S. and Ireland. The exhibit will be on view at the ICC galleries through March 11, 2016.

Also on exhibit in the West Gallery:

Photos of Mongolia by Len Ainsworth

Russian Fairy-Tales, illustrations by Alexander Kurkin (Palekh School)

These exhibits made possible, in part, by a grant from The CH Foundation.


Brian Painting

© Brian Brogan