Donald Bracken
I have been involved with painting landscapes in one form or another for many years. At one time I had a studio on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center as an artist in residence and painted the city and the clouds above from a lofty perch. For the last year and a half I have been concentrating more on terrestrial themes: the farms, the earth, the soil from which our food springs and on which we build our foundation. Through my “dirt” paintings, I have tried to express the omnipotence of the earth, of nature and the fragility of man.
I have been using dirt from farms in Glastonbury and Cornwall, and other natural substances from the ground such as river sand from the Connecticut River, clay from Cornwall, and limestone from Falls Village. I mix the dirt with heavy-bodied acrylic gel which preserves the integrity and permanence of the material. Rich populations of Native Americans may have been supplanted by settlers from another place, the rivers ebb and flow, but the land continues to sustain its people.
These paintings aren’t about a place, they are of the place. I create large canvases rich in texture, with earth and materials from the land we inhabit so that the viewer can feel they are part of the landscape.