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Artist Blake Brasher



Blake Brasher is a visual artist working primarily in mixed media painting. His colorful abstractions explore the tension between perception and structure, reflecting on what it is like to be a thinking being in a world that is at once beautiful and disorienting.


Blake grew up in Alaska and has also lived in Turkey, Texas, and Arizona before moving to Massachusetts in 1997. He received his BS in Art and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003 and his MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2022. He has been exhibiting his work publicly since 2008.


Blake’s work is held in private collections internationally, and he has participated in artist residencies in Italy, Romania, France, New York, and Massachusetts. He is represented by Chase Young Gallery in Boston. Blake lives in Harvard, Massachusetts with his fiancée and their two young sons and maintains a studio in Lowell, Massachusetts.





"When I make a painting, I try to capture that sense of a memory or a new understanding being just out of reach. I use elements like bits of text that are obscured and made un-readable, little doodles, and regular repeating patterns to engage the brain’s recognition systems but leave out just enough to so that the recognition does not quite resolve. In this way my work creates propositional spaces that interact with the imagination. I think of these pieces as abstract mind-scapes. They incorporate different elements of the conscious experience such as raw emotion as colors smeared and poured in fields and streaks or ordered thought as systems of patterns that follow recognizable rules. My work is an exploration of the physical and spiritual nature of life expressed in color and movement.  I believe the purpose of art is to help one find their place in the universe, and I consider a painting a success if it has the power to draw people into a state of meditative contemplation."





Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.

I was pretty overachieving in High School and got into this Pre-College Art Program at Carnegie Mellon between my Junior and Senior years. It was like Art School Camp, sort of a preview of what it would be like to be an undergrad at art school. I loved it. I got to make big paintings with oils, I learned how to stretch my own canvases, I learned how to weld and make metal sculpture, and most importantly I met kids from across the country who actually thought they were going to grow up to be artists, as well as adults who actually were artists! To be honest, until that summer it had not really occurred to me that being an artist was something you could just decide to do!


I was a smart kid and got into MIT, so I kind of had to go. MIT turned out to be great, and I met more amazing people. I cross registered for painting classes at Harvard and made even more giant oil paintings and for a while it felt like I was getting the best of both worlds in terms of visual arts and engineering, but after a couple years I had to bear down and focus on passing classes that would earn me a degree. My major was Visual Arts, but MIT doesn't teach painting, so my Harvard painting classes sadly only counted as general electives.


While I was at MIT I managed to pick up enough technical skills to land my self a job at a robotics research lab after graduating. I've always made it a priority to develop my studio practice, and I've worked hard to balance that with the necessities of paying rent and, later, having a family.


What kind of work are you currently making?

I'm currently making abstract paintings that are sort of "back to basic" pure abstractions. I've developed a lot of little tricks and habits in my practice over the years and I'm working on a body of work that sets all that to the side as a sort of challenge to explore the foundational elements of an abstract paintings composition.


This is all to say I'm using a lot of brushes and acrylic paint and making work that is gestural and layered with many different kinds of marks organized into cohesive systems that seem to verge on the unstable.


What is a day like in the studio for you?

Because my partner and I have two small children, and we both work, my studio time is very precious. Usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when my partner can take care of the morning routine, I get up at 4:30am so I can get to the studio around 5:30 and have a few hours before I have to head to the day job. Sometimes I can get out on a Saturday afternoon when my partner isn't working, and sometimes I will take a day of paid time off to spend a whole day in the studio.


I always have at least one painting that I'm working on, usually two or more. I'll try to get things going right away in terms of getting paint on the canvas, then I'll take breaks to let things dry while I handle email, take photos, and edit posts. Sometimes I'll take naps.


What are you looking at right now and/or reading?

I'm a big science fiction fan and have been re-reading the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks and I'm currently on "Use of Weapons." They are a great set of books that really examines deeply what a post-scarcity science forward future could look like.


I'm also in the middle of "Maintenance of Everything: Part One" by Stewart Brand, which is sort of about being a good steward of the things we rely on.


Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)

Gallery: Chase Young Gallery in Boston (www.chaseyounggallery.com)














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