Oliver Brookes

BIOGRAPHY

Wood Metal Plastics (Furniture) BA was my degree from the revolutionary Construction School in Bristol, jointly set up by the educator, designer and author Norman Potter.

I did make furniture and worked in wood workshops, but eventually turned away from the dust and the saws to become a graphic designer in a warm clean studio. Thirty years later during COVID I took a silver hand shake from Historic Environment Scotland, finished the last two illustrated hardbacks and left my work in book production to became a full-time artist. 

Works

Tour de East Lothian
On Friday mornings I would paint alone in the East Lothian landscape but on Tuesdays and Saturdays I would be hurtling through the same landscape with my club chums on my carbon Cinelli race bike desperately trying to hold onto to the flying peloton. These print works bring together the two experiences of the landscape, racing over it at speed and sitting still with it, taking time. Photography and screen-printing combine with the landscape watercolour to pull the two experiences together in a series called 'Turn Left at the Parachutes', this is a well-known cyclists short cut near Fenton Barns that might get you back in the peloton and give you a short break to view the sea and the hills.

Scots Baronial
I am a bit ashamed of liking the baronial adornments of Marchmont tenements, obsessively drawing the step gables and watching the low sun on the honeyed sandstone. I picture myself, rather, listening to Arvo Part in Mies Van de Rohe’s Farnsworth House secluded in the autumn flood water of Illinois. Maybe in making these print studies of Marchmont I will work out why they make such an inspirational place to live, apart from all the coffee and bike shops.

Blogposts and art at oliverbrookes.co.uk.