Visual artist and poet John Brooks explores themes of identity, memory, death and place while considering questions of contemplation, the expression of emotion, the transformative power and the emotional resonance of particular experiences and what Max Beckmann described as “the deepest feeling about the mystery of being.
John Brooks was born in central Kentucky in 1978. He studied Political Science and English Literature at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, with continuing education in art at Central St. Martins and the Hampstead School of Art in London, England. His work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe, and is included in the collections of the 21C Museum Hotels, Grinnell College Museum of Art, among others. Most recently, Garth Greenwell penned a feature article about Brooks for the The New Yorker titled “A Kentucky Painter’s Travels in Queer Time.”