Pegan Brooke and re.riddle in the If So, What? Art Fair in San Francisco

By Von H. Schoeller & G. Bronewski
Die Welt
April 28, 2018

Diese Kunst Beantwortet Fragen an Das Moderne Leben
This Art Answers Questions of Modern Life

Kann Technologie Auch Entschleunigen? 
Can Technology Also Slow Us Down?

The more we surround ourselves with the Internet, mobile phones and laptops, the more quickly our lives will move. But can technology also help us move more slowly? For even a moment, is it possible to be completely alone?

With the collection of works at this art fair, the London gallery, re.riddle, is proving that it is possible. Particularly compelling is the effect of digital water by the artist Pegan Brooke. It "flows" in a multimedia installation in a dark room by projecting videos of water onto the hands of the viewer. Equally remarkable: the relief typefaces "Textscapes" by the Chinese artist Hongtao Zhou, which not only show the skyline of Paris, New York or Tokyo, but also deal with the fact that these cities are slowly sinking in the water.

Pegan Brooke at George Lawson Gallery

By Greg Flood
Examiner.com
2015

…answers are not what she is looking to provide. The paintings are meditations, beckoning us to slow down and contemplate their subject; to force us to answer for ourselves the questions of what the land means and what our role in it is. 

These are paintings to return to again and again, to continue to ask questions of, to seek answers from… their strengths are the connection they forge with the viewer and the search they illicit within us to find answers to the greater human concern of our relationship to the world.

In an (art)world dominated by go-go-go, to produce works that instantly make a connection with the viewer and which can sustain a continued conversation over time is a mean feat that is a rare find.

Pegan Brooke: Selected Paintings at George Lawson Gallery

By Dewitt Cheng
Art Ltd. Magazine
March 2015

The landscape-inspired paintings of Pegan Brooke, with their atmospherically modulated minimalist grids or brick courses, demand and reward attentive looking; they’re quiet meditations on nature and painterly perception that challenge the current obsolescence paradigm: art that stays art.

Brooke’s landscapes marry the exalted pantheism of romantic 19th-century painters like Caspar David Friedrich and Ferdinand Hodler with the process-based spirituality of Agnes Martin. The rich textures, composed of gestural marks—which suggest inchoate texts to readerly types—and her silvery-gray palette (enlivened by mica-flake iridescence) have something of Jasper Johns as well, while the tremulous, living surfaces suggest Morandi.

These are paintings that are engaged in a dialogue with the culture of art history as well as with living nature.

Pegan Brooke: 3 paintings 3 video poems in Contemplative Practice

By Courtney Gilbert
Curator of Visual Arts
Sun Valley Center for the Arts
2016

Her paintings are luminescent and radiant, but quiet, requiring that one “decelerate..."

Meditations on the color and quality of light, they are also considerations of time—of the way light changes during the course of a day, or even a moment. Time is a factor in the viewer’s relationship to these paintings, too. As we move in front of them, each painting’s shimmering, reflective surface shifts and changes, taking on a kinetic quality. 

When Breath Becomes Light: The Contemplative Art of Pegan Brooke

By Laurie Sammis
Publisher and editor-in-chief
Sun Valley Magazine
2016

Her canvases present carefully constructed patterns of rising and receding color fields, which create natural rhythms of tone and color that both soothe and calm.

There is a quality of air to her paintings that seems to shimmer and slide as light falling on an unbroken expanse of ocean or mist glinting off crystals of snow.

The work is ethereal and the paintings seem almost to breathe the space in which they hang…

There is both an openness and quiet intimacy to each work, drawing out of the thoughtful and careful attention to her process…deliberate and focused.

Pegan Brooke: Selected Painting at OCHI Gallery 

By Pauli Ochi
OCHI Gallery
2016

Like the Southern California generation of Light and Space artists that came before her, Brooke is interested in exploring the nuances of light, atmosphere and material, experimenting to the nth degree with the slightest distinction in pigment and iridescence.

Like the Southern California generation of Light and Space artists that came before her, Brooke is interested in exploring the nuances of light, atmosphere and material... 

Brooke maintains a stark and minimalist rhythm that manages to capture the sublime, transcending what the eye actually sees.

The Art of Contemplation

By Courtney Lauck
Editorial assistant, poet and author
SVPN
2016

Her paintings are abstract, but one can certainly feel the influence of the seasons emanating through the canvas.

Though Brooke is prominently known for her paintings, she also creates video poems and installations. Inspirational experiences in nature are especially striking in a video installation “Acceptance/Resistance” in which light on moving water is projected onto the viewers hands. 

Pegan Brooke Paintings in Matters at Hand

By Rachel Palacios
Heather Gaudio Fine Arts
2017

Turning to water and other natural environments for inspiration are the paintings by Pegan Brooke.  Varying reflections of light and its fleeting essence are represented in patterned gradations of neutral to frosty and dark hues.   Brooke’s oils and added pigments are formed from pure elements of the earth, such as micas, pewter powders and iron oxides.  The subtly shimmering surfaces slow us to a place where we can reconvene with our most basic contemplative, natural state of being.