Artist Profile: Tom Brennan

Artist: Tom Brennan
Business name: Tom Brennan Media
Location: Santa Monica, CA

Website & Blog:
Tom Brennan Media
MySpace

Tom, how do you describe your work?
Tom Brennan Media is the name of my business. I own a boutique PR firm that helps people gain valuable presence and credibility through placing them into major mainstream media. I knew that my other business, art, would be a happy overlap because I had the written-word ability and then a design sensibility in helping clients with every detail sometimes from language to logo; and also using art exhibits as a great way of introducing the different people from my business life to the people from my artistic life; at an event where everyone could use the art as a focal point and then communicate with each other. Collage exhibits seem to inspire a lot of interaction; there is a physicality and playfulness to collage, then when a group of people is buffeted with 4 walls-ful of collages, the atmosphere brings people together. I liken it to a bank of TV sets on four walls, but all with meticulously hand-created TV screen content inside the frame! As events, business people and sports people and media people and underground people and serious collector people, can all let their hair down.

What is your creative process like?
That is a great of question! There is always a preparation time: when I am gathering raw materials: remaindered books, old magazines, books found in used book stores or at yard sales, pages with any kind of unique texture, post cards, miscellaneous photos, etc. I will store a volume of material, and generally one of the two weekend days is my major work period. I might actually dream about an assemblage (based on things I have), but
there is some process where as I do my PR job during the week, I am also subconsciously preparing for the 6-8 hour period I will devote to creating collages on the weekend. I like to aim for 2-3 good collages per weekend. Once I start, I know the assemblage will take on a life of it.s own, and my studio room will be a gymnasium for about 8 hours where I lose track of time and assemble, cutting and shaping patiently until a collage makes me say “I’m finished, that is good just as it is”. Some wonderful moment will always come where I just know that I’ve completed a collage to the best of my ability, and that I should put it in a frame and stop.

Sometimes the first two pieces I pull out of my stack of raw materials, will make a visual sense in juxtaposition, but from there I hope to inspire the factors of randomness and invention, inspired by shape and color, never by “making a statement”. My prime directive in my art-creating moments is that I want to give people an experience of delight at how the assemblage has worked itself out. I like people to come to my exhibits and read themselves
into the work; not feel that they are being pushed to see any viewpoint of mine, but to take my collage and play with it in their mind’s eye. So, when I am working I like to surprise and delight myself, and to take chances merging images and colors and shapes in ways that I have not before.

My most fun is layering over the images with 3 or 4 other layers of images and then cutting and removing and editing so they align with their own found logic. That is why it is so necessary to have tons of good pictures, no throwaways: I like all my raw materials to be quality, so that even if only a smidgen is retained in the final work; it really is a high qaulity smidgen that serves its purpose and the purpose of the work by being an accent.

What kind of training did you have which helped you achieve your current level of artistry?
That’s another good question. I always loved the visual but never thought I had the patience for painting. It seemed a long, long duration for me every time I tried, and not in a pleasant way. And collage seemed to dovetail so well with my notions of the world and how I feel we constantly bombarded with imagery from advertising and news, and we need to empower ourselves by recombining the sheer glut of imagery into an order that is coherent for us.
Collage also seemed more physical to me than painting which turned out to be another reason I liked it. You can move around the room and pick pictures off different piles, and really labor over making the perfect cut of an image so it fits the symmetry of the collage.

My training was literally practicing until I felt I had a very good ability and a very trained eye. I created collages for about 15 years until I felt I had become quite lively and quite competent in my work. The moment that started me thinking that I would be proud to sell these collages was the breakthrough moment when I realized I had finally attained a 3-D richness in one dimension by developing my layering techniques as I say, making collage after collage, always practicing in the best sense of the word It finally seemed I had gotten to the point where collages would assemble themselves out of their own logic: my conscious mind could get refreshed as my physical labor of cutting and shaping and taping and glue-sticking got more graceful and skilled.

Is there a tool or material that you can’t imagine living without?
A good pair of shears that is lived-in to the point where it fits the hand perfectly, and masking tape and glue sticks.

What inspires you to create?
A restless love of creating good work that speaks to people.

What inspires you to keep going when the work gets frustrating or tough?
I somehow always feel faith and humility that the work will take on that special life of its own I was talking about. A feeling that, even when I sometimes will rip my two or three pictures I was going to center the collage around, that I can keep going with the faith that something I like will emerge.

What is your best piece of advice for those who would like to rise in their level of artistry?
Many artists have a vision that is intensely focused before they begin a work. Keep the intent of that vision, but be open to accidents and the unexpected turns of a creation, that enrich it even more. In a short answer: don’t let your mind do all the thinking; in the creative process there are always those moments you cannot define that guide a work into even more satisfying territory for you and your audience.

What takes up the majority of your time besides your art?
Having my own business, which as I say, feeds into this process somehow. I love having collage as a balance to the verbal /writing side of my life.

What’s your favorite comfort food? (Or book, or color, or other hobby…)
Well-made lasagna, I love reading mostly non-fiction American history, love walking as a hobby, and favorite color is probably blue but I can’t personally tell from my work LOL.