Artist Sal Brownfield Discusses His Exhibition - Celebration of Healing: Lives Touched by Breast Cancer

             Sal Brownfield believes that art is a language of healing. On April 11^th at the Center for Ethics, Brownfield presented an artist talk about his series of paintings titled Celebration of Healing: Lives Touched by Breast Cancer. The event was part of the Ethics & theArts Initiative and the paintings will be on exhibit in the Center for Ethics Art Gallery through the end of the semester.

While many works of art are born from the artist's imagination, this series was born from Brownfield's deep commitment to community engagement. He described that his long time desire to do a series of paintings on breast cancer was sparked by photo essays about breast cancer that gave him conflicted feelings. He felt the photo essays portrayed a “militaristic approach” to dealing with illness that was out of touch with reality. Creating these works, for Brownfield, was to show that such a tough and stoic approach didn’t characterize the people he knew who had breast cancer.

Brownfield found that breast cancer touches everyone. Searching for models wasn’t difficult because of the network of people who knew about and supported the project. During the talk, Brownfield defined his work by telling stories. Each subject had stories of triumph and struggle that wove their way into the creative process. For example, Brownfield didn’t instruct the subjects on how to pose or what to wear; instead he captured the subject in positions that were true to their everyday existence. The thing that is so important, Brownfield said, is that the subjects are not so “extraordinary that they’re not like you and me,” they are not militarized. Brownfield built close relationships with the subjects of the paintings and was deeply moved by the fact that each person faced cancer and found within themselves a strength that they didn’t know they had before.

Brownfield’s creative process progressed in the hours and days spent interpreting the stories of each subject with his fingers, through the paint, and onto the canvas. He described that all along he had the feeling of freedom in the sense that he felt no ownership of the paintings. For these works, the artist became an agent existing to express the energy of healing through art.

Join us for a closing reception at the Center for Ethics on April 26^th at 6:30p.m. Click here to find out more about Sal Brownfield.

Photos by Carlton Mackey