Art Gallery
by Michele Malinchak
Charles Browning’s paintings are bold, complex and sweeping. At first glance, they could have been painted a century or more ago, but they are much more than historical renderings. Upon closer inspection, you are taken aback by what you see. By putting his own twist on history, the Bucks County artist debunks myths from the past and shakes our senses in the process.
“I have a sincere flat-footed love of an anachronistic form of painting,” he said, which is a traditional style rooted in realism. He describes his work as “an interplay of art and history, humor and brutality, sincerity and irony, narrative and allegory.”
Charles was always drawn to Americana and historical art. “I’m a history grazer, not a history buff,” he said. Interested in race, power and gender in American history, he noticed most of the artists who dealt with these subjects were women and minorities. As a white male, he wondered how the subjects would change if he approached them from his perspective. History paintings were once considered the noblest form of art, conveying high moral or intellectual ideas. “I wanted to paint in a manner that was the center of art history.”
Charles is also intrigued by history for geographical reasons. “We live in the cradle of American colonial and civil war history,” he said. In addition, he inherited a part of that history. Charles is descended from Revolutionary War general Rufus Putnam who was also the country’s first surveyor general. Putnam also led the first Ohio settlement and is known as the “Father of Ohio.”
Many of Charles’s subjects deal with Manifest Destiny, the mid-1800s belief that the United States was destined to expand to the Pacific Ocean and conquer the entire continent. One of his paintings depicts two frontiersmen paddling in two different directions in the same canoe. Another work portrays a buffoonish character dressed in buckskin about to walk off a cliff. Other works feature Buffalo Bill or encounters with wildlife and Native Americans. The subjects, while from another era, are timeless. As writer William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Artists he admires include Albert Bierstadt, a 19th century American artist known for his lavish landscapes of the American West. Bierstadt was part of the Hudson River School, a group of painters Charles also appreciates. Other favorites include George Caleb Bingham, another great artist of the American West, and the prints of Currier and Ives.
Even at an early age, Charles wanted to be an artist. He was born in 1963 in Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught political science at the University of Wisconsin. His mother is also an artist who paints abstract expressionist works. When Charles was eight years old, the family moved to California and his father began teaching at San Francisco State University.
Charles grew up in Berkeley and enjoyed the rich, multi-cultural area. As a teenager, he would fill sketchbooks with drawings of wizards and demons, eventually deciding to become an illustrator. His goal was to design book covers and illustrate comic books.
While attending California College of the Arts in Oakland, he met his wife, Lynda Gene Rymond, also a student there. In 1987, Charles received his BFA in Drawing/Illustration and the couple married in 1990. They shared a studio in Berkeley, CA and worked on their art.
A change occurred in 1992 when his wife, originally from Feasterville, persuaded him to move back to her native Bucks County. Since then, she has become a published author and day treatment program instructor at Success Rehabilitation in Quakertown where she works with brain injured adults.
With his undergraduate degree, Charles was capable of making art but not promoting it. “I had individual successes that were isolated,” he said, “but didn’t build on them. I knew I needed to build bridges to the art world.”
One of those bridges was exhibiting his work in the 1990s at the former Leleu Gallery in Doylestown, PA. He was also a recipient of the Michener Millennium Award for his December 1999 installation at the James A. Michener Art Museum. Entitled, “A Year And A Day,” the seasonal piece looked at ancient pre-Celtic calendars and eventually travelled to the Islip Art Museum in East Islip, NY.
Also during this time, he did drawings on linen with pencil and white chalk. One of these included a 5-foot by 10-foot reclining nude of George Washington. He painted on plywood as well using a mix of acrylics and oils, layering different styles and subjects in “what I thought was expected of a contemporary artist,” he said.
Partly due to lack of discipline, his original plan of becoming an illustrator faded. From 1993 to 2002, he worked as a pastry baker at Crossroads Bake Shop in Doylestown. He also made the store’s jams and jellies, and until recently his face appeared on their labels.
Charles continued painting on the side, but still was unable to connect his successes into something larger. A turning point in his career was the decision to attend graduate school at New York University, and in 2004 he received his MFA in Studio Art (Painting).
His studies were rigorous and he was often criticized by his peers and professors for “making art marks” instead of being authentic. He was most comfortable painting realism, which the students did not consider contemporary art. “I tore myself down and reconstructed myself,” Charles said of his time there.
A major positive influence at NYU was his professor, Michael St. John, who teaches and shows in New York. He validated Charles’s art by saying it was okay if his style was anachronistic so long as the conceptual piece was there. Charles accomplished this by infusing his work with humor and satire.
“To be relevant,” he said, “the way that I paint and the subject have to come together. The way I paint feeds the subject, and I bend the subjects to my ideas.”
Another major influence in his career was John Torreano, head of the painting area at NYU. In a very basic way, he reassured Charles not to worry about criticism, saying it would all work out. He was right. Charles’s paintings are now represented by Schroeder Romero Gallery, New York, New York, and he has exhibited at many galleries and universities including the Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, PA and at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. Charles maintains two studios from which he works, in Bucks County and Brooklyn, NY. He currently teaches various painting and drawing classes at Bucks County Community College, in Newtown, PA and at University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
His ideas for paintings come while he’s doing automatic activities like brushing his teeth or driving. “I keep the pot on the boil. If I keep putting enough stuff in, something will rise to the surface,” he said.
Charles is a keen observer of nature and takes notes on the shapes of trees, the light at a particular time of day and clouds. “He’s almost gone off the road a few times looking at clouds,” Lynda Gene said.
He likes to slip in subtle, symbolic elements that might not be recognized by everyone, but make the paintings richer and more complex. For example, the plantain weed is an invasive plant introduced by European settlers that appears in many of his paintings. Also, the American chestnut tree is seen in other works. Once an important source of lumber, the trees have been decimated by a fungus that came from the Orient.
Charles relies on other sources for his work including art history books and flower and seed catalogs. He also takes photos of subjects he plans to paint and sometimes features himself in his paintings. Family, friends and neighbors have all posed for photos from which he extrapolates.
For example, in “Thievery,” the painting pictured in this article, Charles photographed himself draped over a couch in order to simulate the correct pose on the horse. He also posed for the Indian in the background. The character trying to steal the horse is comedic in that he is sitting backwards. He also has no understanding of the things he’s taking—aspects of Indian culture like the feathered headdress, the dreamcatcher in his hand and the pinto pony. The Indian appears annoyed but somewhat bemused by what he sees.
At least half of Charles’s paintings have characters, who, like the horse thief, make eye contact with the viewer. This breaks the wall and implicates the viewer, drawing him in.
His paintings range in size from 30 x 24 inches to 7 x 12 feet. He begins by doing a thumbnail, a loose sketch no bigger than a postcard that works out the basic composition. Next, he does a monochrome sketch on the canvas sometimes using burnt sienna. He then paints “wet on wet,” applying wet paint over previous layers of wet paint and blending the colors. Additionally, he builds glazes on top of that, which are thin, translucent layers of paint.
As he entered the art world, Charles was advised by Michael St. John to think of his art as building a house. He cautioned him not to get stuck in a one-room shack where you can only see four walls. In order for ideas to expand and evolve, the artist needs to create enough space for flexibility.
Charles exhibits this flexibility in his newest series of paintings called, “Beauty Trap.” Reminiscent of Dutch floral and still life painters of the 17th and 18th centuries, the paintings are allegories for consumption and excess. Luminous and deftly executed, they question the need for beauty and the trap it can become.
For his next gallery show, he’ll put his oil paints aside and will be painting on paper with powdered graphite. When asked if there are any famous people he’d like to paint, he answered, “I would love to be a presidential portraitist.”
You can see more of Charles’s work online at: www.foundrysite.com.
Michele Malinchak is a freelance writer and avid gardener from Quakertown, PA.