Floating worlds full of atmospheric detail are Brooks Salzwedel’s speciality, producing woodland scenes of suspense through techniques of transparency and opacity. The materials being a variation of tape, acrylic, ink, graphite and coloured pencil, spray paint, collage and mylar in resin, all of which are used on a base of paper or wood.
The settings of Salzwedel’s subjects are those of nature; the capturing of snowdrifts from the mountains, or the sun peeking through the trees, but there is also a strong sense of wildlife being either lost to the human world or its reclaiming of it; with ladders hidden in the foliage of a tree, to a building whose interior is as full of plants as the exterior world that surrounds it. This position of nature can vary from the more obvious; the salt crystallising of man-made objects (metal tins) that hold an image of Salzwedel’s nature as it flourishes underneath the surrounding crystals. To the more subtle; Hidden Sails, (2018) – where in amongst a copse, you at first see the barren trunks of trees to then only realise their structure is too rigid, too defined and that they’re telephone lines, power relays etc.
Hidden Sails, 2018, Brooks Salzwedel. Graphite, Ink, Tape, Resin.
© 2004-2021 Brooks Shane Salzwedel.
There is an extreme luxury of softness to Salzwedel’s art, with the playful use of colour being warm and inviting while the gradients for sunsets or rises are done so delicately that there’s no harsh line or division. In Salzwedel’s world everything has a sense of coming together.
In more recent works however, Salzwedel has moved to using a larger variety of colour than his earlier portfolio; where before just one colour would be used in an almost monochrome /sepia perspective – Neon Thing in Trees, (2015). This recent trend in colour has also seen Salzwedel investigate an inclusion of his current life and memories, with suggestions of a childhood seen through cartoon drawings of strange creatures, rainbows, ribbons and flags etc. In Absence/No Presence(2019) there are hints of children once being present with abandoned play equipment, the plants around it swallowing it up, but in the middle of the climbing frame is a rainbow – the joy once experienced here? While in the far corner is a small line written “my dead dad”, it suddenly feels like a diary opened up. There are also repeating symbols in Salzwedel’s art like the letter G, to seahorses, oil rigs and only that which a child could imagine; a rainbow-kite creature, each of their inclusions personal to the artist like a secret code. In choosing to include them in his dusty landscapes, Salzwedel shows a juxtaposition of times, it’s hard to specify or even imagine when the paintings could be set, while the childlike imagery stands so far apart in style from the rest of his work that it makes the two seem almost in conflict.
Neon Thing in Trees, 2015, Brooks Salzwedel. Graphite, Color Pencil.
© 2004-2021 Brooks Shane Salzwedel.
Brooks Salzwedel’s work is both evocative, unsettling and beautiful, where urban life and nature have met – our memories and past fragmented whilst still being present.
