FRESH FRIDAY | PHYLLIS BRAMSON

Phyllis Bramson; painter, collage enthusiast, and a formative kitsch appropriating artist. Her work personifies a certain collectible item motif, those antique tchochkes that sit on the shelf at your grandmother's house. Seemingly, Bramson's inspiration comes from these very items, but nevertheless placed in a very different context.

Phyllis Bramson has been known throughout her career as utilizing these familiar kitsch motifs to portray sexuality, question gender roles, and showcase ethnic symbolism. She creates narrative works that provoke edgy emotions, digging its way into the human psyche and disturbing it. Deeply involved symbolism has defined Bramson as a narrative painter. Each piece tells a narrative with subtle iconography, but also quite frequently, with blunt sexual interaction.

Through both painted works and found, cut imagery, Bramson pieces together her narratives. Although most of the pieces are majority paint, Bramson has also cut up her own paintings to refit them into a different work. Collage material also inspires some of her painted figures. The characters are perched precariously or hang suspended within the composition, giving her work a Surrealist environment, although a narrative, it is one set more in a philosophical sense. 

Emotionally fueled, Bramson sets her scenes based off both the beautiful and the grotesque seen in our world, re-imagined and bluntly stated within her superimposed alternative.