Brendan Donleavy

ARTIST STATEMENT

I clearly remember being surrounded by giants as a child. By lowering themselves from the heavens these leviathans communicated via instruction, question or reply. My infantile knowledge and communication skills forced their want of meaningful dialogue to be replaced by indulging my desires or sentencing me to an arbitrary task or punishment. I was subject to their whim. They were gods capable of giving or taking; each with their own personality and jurisdiction as I learned social structure and hierarchy. I use Germanic/Norse folklore because its gods and giants have a constant presence in English speaking countries. Days of the week are named after the gods and children are given names of forgotten Vikings. The characters’ personae are also easily translated in to the modern world.

I have a goal of conjuring the viewer’s primitive feeling of insignificance and wonder that was omnipresent in childhood. By working on a large scale I can intensify the audience’s reaction by generating the perspective of a child as they are forced to step back to view the image in its entirety. I want the viewer to feel empathetic to themselves at a prior point in their lives.

All of my images portray authority, power or beauty and often have subliminal notes of violence in an approach to create a fresh take on contemporary portraiture that investigates nature, myth, occupation and social evolution. I am greatly interested in human interaction with subjects bordering the line between real and imaginary which explore rudimentary human emotion and extend into existentialism.

My sources are essential actors picked for visual aesthetic and documented accordingly. Using classical techniques paired with limited colors and exposed wooden panels I aim to magnify the beauty of natural and manufactured elements while dedicating myself to a rule of delicate restraint.