Everything means something to Phoenix S. Brown. The Milwaukee-based artist infuses depictions of nature in her paintings and drawings with a hint of mystique – blue flames, pearl-like moons, lizards with split tails. “[I like] getting things away from what we deem as natural and making them more fantastical,” she says.
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The name of this painting, Foretelling, suggests an omen within the otherworldly landscape, but the work’s fate wasn’t preordained. Brown composed it, like many of her pieces, through trial and error. As a result, different symbols emerge from the dark, but with one theme: purification.
She started by stretching a large canvas and sketching. “The composition changed multiple times,” she says. “I have a tendency to cover up the work that I make because I feel maybe insecure or stuck.” The only elements that stayed through each iteration were the arched frame and the pointy stars that resemble broken glass.
Her proclivity for changing things up factors into her paint of choice – acrylic because it dries fast. But rather than hide those changes, Brown embraces them. Sketches that she collaged into the work are apparent, and even the ones painted over show their edges in the surface.
“Adding drawings on top of a painting breaks up the composition but also adds some serendipitous meaning,” she says. Her decisions aren’t random; she follows movement and considers whether the placement or imagery feels coherent. If it doesn’t, she adds something so it does, like the grid that shrouds this painting.
Once Brown blocked the colors, she added details in oil pastel, like the glimmers in the water. Foretelling is “so dark,” she says. “But I think there’s something to be said about staring into something shadowy. It reminds me of scrying,” or foretelling the future in a pool of water or crystal ball.
- Look closely to see the checkered pattern from the original sketch.
- The two fires in the piece represent “burning things away that no longer serve you. There’s a hand on the side that’s holding the match. It’s like reclaiming that purification power,” Brown says.
- Brown placed this sketch here because its motion matched the direction of the rope and the grass.
- These hands slither through the grass and emerge from a pool to reach the moon and stars. “The waves [on the arms] become scales and then water droplets,” Brown says. “It’s constantly shifting.”
