The power of Emily Brookover’s new show, The Broken Winter (on display at Friends University’s Riney Gallery through Nov. 17th), rests in the restorative powers of silence.
There is a knowing ambiguity in these drawings. The imagery can be fleeting, mysterious, even to the artist. Each work is “Untitled” (but parenthetically descriptive) not for lack of creativity, but to subtly reinforce an intended intimacy between the observer, the observed, and the unknown.
Brookover’s remarkable technical ability is well worth the visit in itself. Masterful drafting describes spare, ethereal landscapes, flora, and fauna. Vacant seats offer rest. Houses beckon inward. Doors (not windows) reflect vast empty fields as pure and white as snow.
The overall impression is like a narrative without a fixed sequence; one of change, consequence, and revival. “Untitled (the water to come)” suggests transformation; eager, anxious, both. A sphere (one can imagine as a portrait) empties and fills, drowns and breathes, lives and dies, in no particular order; all through choice and perspective.
In “Untitled (landscape),” a tightly braided (constricted) ponytail is freed from concept when juxtaposed against the infinite potential of unmarked paper. Space here is a recurring aesthetic device employed with symbolic purpose, cohesion, and elegance.
The work “Untitled (well loved)” (a framed, very well used Derwent drawing pencil), perfectly summarizes larger themes of commitment, sacrifice, and union; literally reborn as the drawings that surround it. In this way, creative and destructive processes are seen as two sides of the same coin.
The Broken Winter is like a broken spell; the rousing warmth of sun on a cold winter day. Rendered with beauty and grace, the sublime minimalism and acute sensitivity feels like Rothko at his most spiritual and O’Keeffe at her most tender. A martyr’s tale; generous and humbling, this is Brookover at her most enchanting. Don’t miss it!