Brian Flinn

Statement: Drawing Conclusions

For the past twenty-five years, digital media has been a central component of my studio practice comprising the majority of my exhibited work. However, physical drawing has played a fundamental part of my process. The occasional drawing or mixed media work has leaked into various gallery walls, but they have rarely gathered into a room together.

This exhibit brings together works spanning a variety of years, highlighting the maps of mark making that create the foundation for further explorations in both paint and digital media. Drawing is the essential act that underpins my practice, offering me a venue from which to investigate and engage with the ideas and concepts that consistently drive my work. There are careful, slow meanderings of graphite and pastel, and large arcs of splashed or spilled ink that comprise much of these pieces. There are collage elements and scrapes that interact with the lines and areas, shaping the landscape of these drawings.

The works selected here represent some of the pieces that have made the most impact on my work and on my practice, drawings from which I learned a great deal. And sometimes I learn that I’ve gone the wrong way. Sometimes I’m brought to wonderful conclusions. Eventually, I’ve been able to draw my way out of any place I’ve landed, beginning the search again and again. Each conclusion is merely one step forward, and so I continue to follow the line.

Biography

Brian Flinn is a mixed media and digital artist from Derby, CT whose work explores issues of paradox and fragments of time. In his digital work, he uses scanned objects, drawings and photographs as the ingredients for collages which draw from his experiences with painting and illustration to build images of multiple layers and surfaces. His recent work explores themes of loss and memory through texture, shape and symbolism.

Brian Flinn earned his B.F.A. in Illustration and an M.S. in Art Education from the University of Bridgeport and his M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in NYC where he studied with Marshall Arisman, Tom Woodruff and the painter Paul Vazquez. Brian began teaching in 1995 and spent 17 years teaching in the Amity School District. Since 2013 he has served as an Associate Professor of Art at Central Connecticut State University, teaching Painting, Digital Art and Art Education courses for undergrad and graduate students.

In addition to multiple exhibitions throughout Connecticut including the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, University of Bridgeport’s Shelfhaudt Gallery, Canton’s Gallery On the Green, and the New Britain Museum of American Art, Flinn’s work has been shown in galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe. These include Partium Christian University in Oradea, Romania, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts, Verum Ultimum Gallery in Portland, OR, Gallery 66 in Cold Springs, NY and the Modern Visual Arts Gallery in Bethlehem, PA .