The Journals

Doug Brin, age 26, 1973

What follows is a representative sample of my journals.  

I call them JOURNALS because they include an overriding visual content.

As both an artist and writer, I feel their unique format best reflects my dual identity as a creative person.

They comprise a visual diary.

My motives, perseverance, and preference for maintaining these annual volumes for over half-a-century, uninterrupted comprise:

.  The desire to leave a physical record of my life and times.

and thus—hopefully (!)—to gain a measure of immortality

.  A hope that this particular means of self-expression and self-awareness will illuminate my persona

.  An aim to expose an interior life in the context of the exterior world in which that more intimate existence is necessarily submerged

Looking back these many years, I hope this project comprising my entire adult lifetime has expanded my horizons; and included the hopes, fears, and aspirations of others, as well.

I’ve endeavored to include entries that mirror events in the larger world, and frequently, as they’ve been reflected and interpreted in current periodicals and literature as well.

A journal is undeniably directed at posterity, more than an audience of one.  Its creator has an eye on eventual publication, as a form of autobiography, perhaps the material for a future biographer, or—in my case—of interest to a visual curator.

By now, in what I term my life’s work, these volumes comprise thousands of pictorial design spreads containing illustration and collage; and collectively, millions of words, many quoting from literary and journalistic sources.

I have not hesitated to include the frustrations, disappointments, and embarrassments entailed in trying to navigate a life that’s included at least five career paths, countless jobs, raising two children primarily on my own; and six-hour brain surgery that left me more dead than alive, and necessitated a circuitous road back to recovery.

As someone constantly aware of the universal shadow of mortality, it is a comfort to know I will leave this record behind me. 

Comedy And Tragedy (2002)

Amphibious Man (2002)

Centaur (1996)

Flying Creature (2007)

Grim Brin (1979)

Two-Faced (1981)

Carrot Head (1982)

Madame Butterfly (1999)

July (2002)

Pard (1998)

The Don Is Done (2004)

The Father Of Our Country (1999)

Running Man (1998)

U.F.O. (1999)

Tornado (1998)

Susan Hayward (2002)

The Outriders (1998)

Alain Delon And Monica Vitti (1998)

Corporate Reptile (2002)

9.11: It Can Happen Here (2001)

Eyelash (2006) Creature #27 (2005) Keep Your Head Up (2003) New Year (title page, 2007) What Disputed Ballots? (2000) Centaur (2005)

Simone And The Kitchen Towel (2006)

Tyrone Power (2005)

Telephone Chicken (2001)

Decembre (1997) Juin Space Man (2005)

Lord & Taylor (2003)

Watching Al Gore (2000)

Janvier Face (2000)

Feb Head (2000)

Mars Creature (2003)

Circles Of Avril (2003)

Life Is Beautiful (2005)

Queen Of Hearts/Blackout (2004)

It Came From Outter Space (1997)

Words, Words, Words (2003)

We Love You, Frank Perdue (2003)

April & Me (journal entry, 1997)

THE ARTIST'S PROFILE

Keep Your Head Up (Personal Journal Entry) 2003

The Latest From Robert Rauschenberg 1999

41"x 32"

Douglas Brin is a New York based artist who creates thought-inspiring works out of some very unlikely materials. His childhood included extensive stints as publicity and print fashion model; exposed to the worlds of advertising, live television, and then-popular culture. He brings these formularized experiences to his art in the homage of luminary screen legends, political figures and other notable personalities. Brin applies a high degree of technical skill and subtle craftsmanship to his work, extensively accelerated by his keen sense of composition, whimsy and input of both irony and humor. An instinctive educator, archivist, and historian, Brin catalogs and explores myriad contemporary social and political issues through his rigorously illuminating relief paintings, sculpture and collages.

Little Match Girl 1986
9 1/2" x 9"

Brin uses a satisfying and visually textured hybrid of non-traditional materials in conjunction with dynamic contemporary methods exemplified by meticulous patterned collages, paintings, constructions, to provoke contemplation through reference and imagery. He relishes and flourishes in process art and implores us to consider and reconsider what we hold as true and certain. The resulting compositions, gently and cleverly exposes and expands our point-of-reference on the condition of contemporary life.

Block Gallery 1991

7"wx7"dx81/2"h

Brin’s work borders on—but in the final analysis barely hangs back from--Expressionist Abstract Art. His subjects demonstrate a harmonious blend of rich color or thick relief crosshatched texture. His expressive visual landscape incorporates a lucid network of colors and an extensive fusion of textures.

To quote the artist: “My visual vocabulary is actually an amalgamation and commentary on what I hope is an evocative yet original thought process. I’m also determined to rescue and utilize little, frequently-neglected, recognizable objects that--when amalgamated-- are far more than the sum of their parts, I'm also determined to make coherent sense of the world through its smallest yet tantalizing elements. This personal visual universe reflects on a random and frequently nonsensical world that can seem disjointed and out-of-order. I try to compose with random pieces of material to make sense of what I visualize between the cracks and puzzlements. I’m attempting to reorder and organize the confusing little parts that compose what I perceive as our finite and often frustrating existence.”

Cloud Casino 1999
6" x 8"

To view a Douglas Brin collage or construction is to inhabit a world that commemorates the irony and wonder of the human ego, beckoning the viewer to take in the diverse panorama of his sensitivities and subjects. Here, fading newspaper cuttings of historical events, photographs of politicians, presidents, movie stars, curious personalities and past luminaries, vintage signage, dated commercial branding and advertising designs are captured and archived within glass and thick elaborate framing as color confidently intersect with form, content and composition.

Blake, where are you? 2006
24" x 291/2"

Brin’s oeuvre entails a plethora of ephemera within intricate constructions of visually sizable bric-a-brac and objects that are laid on thickly on the periphery of framed collage; at times the paint is minimal and executed with recognizable brushstrokes that add to a sense of motion, intention and vitality.

These creations buzz with life, creating a representation of hue and movement that capture the life essence of the personalities he seeks to represent caricature.

Pinochet Flag 1990
13 1/2" x 17 1/2"

Brin began his career as a traditional painter. This background evolved into the basis for his life’s work, where his technique mirrors the traditional artistic expressions of post-modern art, readily recognizable and reflective of the work of many of today’s contemporary Western masters. In his pieces, painting is a contributory element rather than a dominant feature.

Ladies With Umbrella Hats 1985

46"x23"

He creates compositions and textures that give his works an illustrative and provocative quality, and provide numerous and diverse elements of nostalgic and creative reference. His style and wide body of historical and interpretive conceptual thought incorporates Pop Art qualities. These, in turn, provide a playfulness and whimsicality to everyday-life objects. These influences are happily exhibited and enhanced by his balanced sense of composition and meticulous harmony, where objects are carefully arranged to convey a sense of stimulation and poise. But there is vitality here as well, that renders his work anything but traditional. He is naturally and freely able to transform this energy and spirit into a contemporary expression that is his own and ultimately original.

Alpha Beta Chi 1994
15" x 17 1/2"

Douglas Brin also works in distinct mediums outside of collage, three-dimensional construction and painting, most notably as an ongoing, unique and illustrative diarist with a continuous, forty-year body of annual journals that comprise a virtual history of our times. This unprecedented accumulation of meticulous and highly detailed work infuses drawing, collage, colored pencil and a remarkable use of contrasting elementary color. The journals, which are both enthralling and encyclopedic, showcase an intense personal introspection, a lively appreciation for contemporary history and literature, and a detailed dose of daily self-scrutiny, humor and irony.

At The Museum 2001

25"x24"

These annual journals, some forty-odd strong, fastidiously and scrupulously maintained for over four decades make up possibly the most substantial and selective of Brin’s oeuvre. They reflect on an ordinary world that he attempts to infuse with the curious and extraordinary and contain a delightful, engaging, and frequently surprising plethora of mysteries, secrets and self revelation, and—in what are by now an accumulation of thousands of visual images and possibly millions of words — provide elements and experiences that can be most subtle and intriguing. These visual messages and memories frequently come forward in place of what may at first be seen as mundane and ordinary.

Profile By King Molapo.