Brooke Einbender is a San Francisco, CA native who has also spent time living in New Mexico, North Carolina, and New York. She was awarded the Presidential Scholarship for Visual Arts at Wake Forest University which led her to pursue her artistic passion seriously. As a student, Brooke could be found at 2 AM painting late in her studio making a colorful mess with the music on full-blast. In 2017, she graduated with a BA in Studio Art and a concentration in oil painting. After a year of working in the art world in New York City, she finally succumbed to the voice in the back of her mind that was telling her to ‘make your own damn art.’
Brooke moved to Telluride last September 2018 during Blues and Brews Fest and, like many, fell in love with the magic of this place. She integrated into the Arts community taking classes at Ah Haa, securing an art studio at Voodoo and receiving a small artist grant to purchase Virtual Reality equipment.
There are many exciting things on the horizon for Brooke: her paintings will be on display at Ghost Town Coffee in August/September, her Virtual Reality paintings will be featured at Art/Architecture Week, she was selected as an ‘artist in collaboration’ for the ski brand Phunkshun, and her first solo exhibition will take place at 81435 Gallery in March 2020!
We asked Brooke a few questions:
3 words to describe your work: Multidimensional, colorful, mind-bending
Describe your process: When starting a painting, I have no vision what the end result should look like. I let my intuition guide me as my process shifts between chaos and order, organic and geometric shapes, irregularity and symmetry, and frustration and satisfaction.
What sparks your interest? I love looking closely at reflections of objects and how light bounces off things to create shadows. A few things I am interested in: fractals, geometry, mandalas, crystals, color theory, symmetry, optical illusions, and visionary art
Where do you think Virtual Reality can take you? Virtual Reality painting is mind-expanding. When wearing the VR headset, you are fully immersed in the virtual realm and the creative opportunities are endless. I’m interested in translating my oil paintings into virtual space so they become experiential. As with painting, I no longer have to create an illusion of space on a 2D surface; instead, I can draw sculpture, meander around a line suspended in space, and walk through layers of virtual paint. I think that my virtual reality painting ‘experiences’ will lead to site specific installation work in the near future… aka taking my virtual spaces and bringing them back into our concrete reality.
Do you collect anything? I love anything and everything spicy. Growing up in New Mexico, green and red chile were staples in my diet. Now I am slowly building a collection of exotic hot sauces. My favorite hot sauce currently is Truffle Hot Sauce.
Most looking forward to? Two things… 1) My first summer in Telluride! Doing all the outdoorsy things and experiencing all the fun, quirky festivities. 2) Getting to know the local artists in Telluride and working on some cool future collaborations
Most Recent Book You Read? Celestine Prophecy, which contained the answers to so many questions floating in my mind.
Favorite childhood memory: I was 8 years old and living in Santa Fe at the time. My extracurricular activities were as weird as they were cool... I had ‘best in show’ guinea pigs that I competed with in 4H, I took traditional Japanese sumi e ink painting classes, and had a gold medal in the Irish jig.