For this assignment I went to the Schnitzer Art Gallery right here at the University of Oregon campus. While walking around the gallery, the one painting that really caught my eye was the work of Jay Brackstand called “Pick an Apple, Any Apple”. The reason this piece caught my eye was the unique style in which it was presented. The painting is separated into three different sections. The first section has a horse riding what appears to be a motorcycle of some sort with random pink dots scattered on the section. The second section has a pair of woman’s legs and a small woman in between the feet of the legs. In the final section there is an outline of an oriental woman hold a fish and in from of her there is a bucket of dead fish.
After looking at Brackstand’s painting, I couldn’t figure out what his message was. So I checked out some of his other work and I realized that he always had three separate sections with arbitrary photos of the past and present. Some had random dots and silhouettes like the painting I viewed. I realized the Brackstand used abstract paintings to express his outside the box view. You can understand his message if you take a step back and interpret the paintings from a symbolic stand point. I think Jay Brackstand is a great artist who has a creative and unique approach to get his point across.
