Joy Brenner
New York
At over 70, I do not have a traditional resume. I only have my life…my paintings are born of emotion and a release of that emotion into the world.
MessageJoy creates paintings with depth, texture, and movement. Captivated by everything from bright colors to dark, brooding work, she works almost exclusively in acrylic on canvas. Often, she uses additional materials for texture until a piece feels right.
Most of her early work was created out of internal necessity, setting brush to canvas in order to pull out emotions she couldn't articulate in words alone. Her more recent work builds on those emotions with intense curiosity about the process of art, often asking "what if?" as she creates a painting to see what develops.
She signs her canvases only on the back and often in all four corners so as not to provide any preconceived notions to the viewer of how to definitively interpret the work.
Statement
One day 30 some years ago a personal event sent me into a place of pain from which I could find no escape. Ironically, sometimes when we are given our most pain, we are also given our most love. To travel through the intensity of the emotional explosions inside of me, I was desperate to find away to release some of them.
It never occurred to me to try painting until one day I found myself staring at an old easel and paint brushes at a lawn sale. The elderly man selling them said I should give it a try, and then he said something about it making me feel better. I thought it was an odd thing to say in the situation, but why not try. I was desperate and had nothing to lose.
My kitchen became my studio. My paints became my teachers. The journey had begun and I didn’t even know it. I haven’t been to art school. I’ve had no mentor. I do not have a traditional resume. I only have my life. The point of all of this is that my paintings are born of emotion and a release of that emotion into the world.