FARRELL BRICKHOUSE

Making Art is a way to share the totality of what I've seen, touched and what has touched me. I believe the making of a painting needs that moment of epiphany and a trace of how the imagery conveyed thru paint was discovered and experienced by the artist. Not a graphic notation of the language of experience but the mystery of it. For me art is a personal odyssey. A vehicle to carry me forward and find some deeper unity in what is happening in and around me. Art is a slow burn, working its gift on individuals. It is based on a life lived worked into a liquid space. Octavio Paz said that art turns the viewer into an artist.
I want my paintings to be a haunted living presence that reveals to the viewer passion, intellect, mystery and that changes with each day’s new light. One of arts chief functions is to resist the denaturing forces that are always present; those things that would take away our transcendent possibilities and turn us into stereotyped beings. For me Art is not the production of meaning but the providing of a genuine experience of what it is to be alive and in the world.

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Farrell Brickhouse was born in New York City in 1949 and attended Queens College of the City University of New York where he graduated in 1974. He studied with Charles Cajori, Gabriel Laderman, lya Bolotowsky, Judy Pfaff and Richard Serra was his 2- D Instructor. In 1971 he spent a Summer at the famed Skowhegan School in Maine where he studied with Brice Marden, Alex Katz and Lucas Samars. Living in Lower Manhattan in what was to become Tribeca in the mid 1970’s allowed Brickhouse a front row seat in that vital emerging Downtown artist community. By 1978 he had his first NYC One Person Exhibition with the pioneering gallerist Julian Pretto. Brickhouse was awarded The National Endowment for the Arts in both 1980 and 1983. In 1979 he had his first of two Solo Exhibitions with Max Protetch and starting in1988 had 4 One Person Exhibitions with the Pamala Auchincloss Gallery into the mid-1990’s. Along the way there have been dozens of Group Shows here and abroad. With the closing of the Auchincloss Gallery in 1996 Brickhouse had a hiatus from showing that lasted over a decade which allowed him to work and deepen his art. With the advent of social media he found a new audience and has had a number of Solo Exhibitions since 2010 showing with John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY, Fred Giampietro Gallery in New Haven, CT, George Lawson Gallery in SF, CA and Life on Mars Gallery in Bushwick, NYC and currently this Two Person Exhibit at The Lodge Gallery on the Lower East Side in NYC. Brickhouse has participated in the current resurgence of painting with numerous group shows notably at Brian Morris Gallery, Ed Thorp Gallery, Lesley Heller Gallery, Hathaway David Contemporary in Atlanta, Cape Cod Museum, Hillsboro Fine Art in Dublin and VUE Contemporary Art Fair at the RHA, Little Berlin in PA, The Institute Library Gallery, artStrand in MA, Peters Projects in Santa Fe, Luise Ross Gallery, Honey Ramka, Elgin Gallery, Minus Space, Arte Internazionale, Mattera Italy, Scope, NY, The Painting Center, Brooklyn Open Studios and Life on Mars Gallery, NY.
Farrell Brickhouse is also an Educator and has been an Instructor of Painting at The School of Visual Arts since 1980 and a Visiting Artist at many Universities and centers of learning over the years.