Mack Brislawn As well as portraiture and academic figure drawing in charcoal, my interest  is contemporary western landscape. I grew up on a pioneer homestead west of Devil's Tower and I learned to love the arid beauty there. I use oils and watercolor to express the mood of the hills and prairie, the beauty and color in the particular and commonplace landscape... hopefully,  lifting it to the realm of the ideal and universal.

Art allows me to get closer to the land and earth, closer to whatever or whomever I paint. I strive for my work to have the tactile quality and brute energy of nature herself. My paintings are of the present, but draw nourishment from the past. I don't paint by formulas, so each piece is different. But since each canvas is a new trial, each canvas is also an independent investigation which I believe is necessary for the making of art worth serious attention.

To paraphrase the I Ching, "The wind blows over the hills and stirs the grass. Thus, the visible effects of the invisible are manifested." The task of the artist is to make visible forces and energies that are invisible.

Residing in Laramie, WY, Brislawn likes traveling through the Western states and Europe , using oils and watercolor to express the mood of the hills and prairie, the beauty and color in the ordinary, commonplace landscape - to recreate not a scene but the feeling of experiencing that space.

Education: M.A. in Painting from the University of Wyoming
The Rocky Mountain School of Art, Denver, CO
Creighton University, Omaha, NE
Scottsdale Artist's School, Color Theory with Daniel Howe
Workshops with various artists

Figurative
April	Beth 7 x 10, $125

©Mack Brislawn/ Artist of the Northern Front, Laramie Wyoming