Portland Art Gallery Artist: Brian Jude Reardon

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching our video podcast Radio Maine, where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine, and today I have with me artist Brian Reardon, who is with us at the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine, and newly joined. So it's really my pleasure to get to know you a little bit more, Brian.

Brian Reardon: Thank you for having me. This is pretty exciting, and a beautiful studio.

Lisa Belisle: I love that when you were walking towards the studio, walking towards the door, you were just looking around with this admiration. I feel that every day that I get up. So I feel like we might be kindred spirits in this.

Brian Reardon: The spectacular setting, the fog and mist coming off the ocean, boy.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, it's a pretty amazing place to live.

Brian Reardon: I imagine.

Lisa Belisle: And you've lived in some amazing places. You grew up in Vermont and you've been in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, so you've had access to some of these areas.

Brian Reardon: I've been really fortunate. In Vermont, a majority of my life was spent there, and I go back. Family has property up there, a vacation home that we all descend upon on the holidays, and that's very spectacular, on Lake Champlain, Grand Isle. And Boston's fun and unique in its own way, the museums to go to. There were some fantastic sunsets down along the water in Rhode Island while going through school, and for six years after I lived there.

Lisa Belisle: When we asked you about your background, one of the things that you brought up was that you always felt supported by your parents in your decision to go into art. And this is interesting, because your father was, I believe, a chemical engineer with...?

Brian Reardon: IBM. Yes.

Lisa Belisle: So you have, and I don't know what your mother was, but certainly as a scientist, for your father to support somebody down an art path is pretty wonderful.

Brian Reardon: Yes. And I thank my lucky stars for that chance. An engineer's mind and linear approach to things was interesting from my take on how to look at things. He was fantastic in support for all of us. He basically wanted all his children to be the best they could be at what they were doing, as my mother as well. They were fantastic.

Lisa Belisle: I think that's really important, because you come from a family of eight. I come from a family of 10. I loved reading about how you would watch your dad, and he would get dressed up every morning and he would be happy to go to work and do his thing and then come back at the end of the day. And that was very similar to the way that my dad approached his life as a family doctor, and my mother as well, as a teacher and a mother. It was such an important thing. Similarly, he had this little shirt with short sleeves, and he would wear a tie with it and a little button-down, and it was pretty much the same thing every morning. And I think he took such joy not only in his work, but in supporting his family. That was such an important thing for him.

Brian Reardon: As well in my family too. It was a beautiful grounding for me to see, and I think for all of us. Being in a large family, we all have different interests and strengths and things we like to do. And for me, it happened to be that I would lose myself in time by drawing, and to be able to continue that, I was super lucky and just loved it. And there were great examples, and just the approach on things, his repeating of the Jesuit education of chance favoring the prepared mind, and a positive outlook. Give yourself a chance to do something. And I'm just fantastically lucky. I miss them terribly, but I'm fairly fortunate. It's such a different world from what he, doing chemical engineering. I'm not exactly sure of the solutions, but there was art to it, I imagine, in managing problems and people and how to get things done.

Lisa Belisle: I think that you're right. I think there is art and creativity in the engineering. And I recall that there was a conversation you had with him about math and the simplicity and the artistry of math.

Brian Reardon: Yes. That was, thank you for reminding me. That conversation was very frustrating for me in math. It felt like I had to paddle twice as hard to get to the same distance as the usual would do. But just learning that it can be a concrete experience, but there is an art to the solutions that you arrive at. And this is, I believe, higher-end math that I don't know anything about. But just to know that that world exists made me a bit more aware of the possibilities, and it draws similarities between different worlds. Art, engineering, among everything.

Lisa Belisle: Well, you and me both. I cannot claim any great affinity toward, or any sort of great talent in, the field of math per se. But I know, after speaking with another artist recently, she talked about, for example, sacred geometry, and this idea of geometry having this artistry to it and actually the spirituality to it. And I know that's not strictly the same type of high-level math that maybe some people think about, but I think you're right. This idea that the arrangements of things, the flow of things, the interpretation of things and the creativity around all of that is really intriguing to think about, because it may not be the same as painting, but it certainly is a way that the mind works through things and appreciates things in a much more significant way.

Brian Reardon: Yeah, I think that can be true. And the golden ratio, talking about math principles that can be brought up into interpretation and development of art, I think has some truths in there. And looking through the Renaissance, all art history, seeing the examples of how things were broken up, just to be able to understand it a little more, make it a little more accessible to the layman, and going through those steps in building imagery, or basically paintings or drawings, that can help. And proportion, and all things when you're rendering something, it's been an aid.

Lisa Belisle: So you're interesting in looking at your work, Brian, because you choose these objects that are so appealing. You and I were talking about Herbie, the VW Bug, and of course there was, in the seventies, was it a TV show or a movie, or maybe both? Not sure.

Brian Reardon: Early Disney movies, in 1963 or '62 when they did several, and I think they did a remake recently, in the last decade. But the objects, usually it's something I find interesting and would like possibly to have, but you can't really have that in your living room, the full object, whether it be a car, a tractor, different objects that I find interesting and that the play of light on, I would like to just see how that would look in a painting. Usually the objects are things that make me happy. It's not much beyond that if I'm doing it for myself. Because when you're doing anything for yourself, you want to enjoy it visually, mentally looking over the forms. And that's been the case with the different tractors and cars. The tractors are lucky finds on the travels back and forth to Vermont, in the smaller farm fields. And as I mentioned, asking a farmer if it's okay to photograph their tractor, and then asking them what their favorite tractor is if they have multiples. And the best answer is the one that starts for them. It made me laugh. It was pretty real. Some of the tractors don't look like they'd run, but it's a very green attitude, I think, keeping old metal going so you're not building more things into the earth to basically throw away. They're not throwing stuff away up there, and on any farm, I don't think they try to make things go beyond their use as much as possible.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I think that's such an interesting observation, that with whether it's the VW Bugs or whether it's a tractor or whether it's the Airstreams that you've liked to focus on, there is some sort of ongoing usage for them beyond what we think about these days, the natural life of something electronic, for example.

Brian Reardon: And different periods of industrial design. The forms, I think, speak to me a little. I enjoy the Airstreams, the aerodynamic aspect of different vehicles and how they all had a uniqueness. When you're passing an old car, if you know them a little bit, you can immediately think, oh, that's an old Buick, or that's an old caddy, pardon me. Just a familiarity with these beautiful shapes. And again, it goes back, not too sophisticated. It made me happy, so I'm going to try and paint it. And they sometimes take on a life of their own in a way that I like to see them. Often they're bubble cars, which are pretty fun, unique shapes. And who is going to put themselves into that death trap? But I might if I could afford to have one. Just to know that they were again built out of necessity after the war, World War II, in Italy and Germany, not a lot of metal laying around. So they're trying to make small people-movers, and the unique shapes, it just again made me happy to see.

Lisa Belisle: And there is a nostalgia around this for, I think, a lot of people, because one of the early cars that my eventual then-husband had was a VW Bug. It was a little yellow VW Bug. By the time he had it, it had a long life already. And so we could literally, if you moved the floor mats aside, you could actually see the road moving underneath us.

Brian Reardon: It's like the Flintstones. Yes.

Lisa Belisle: Exactly. Like the Flintstones. And the heat, or, actually I'm pretty sure there was not air conditioning. There were vents. The heat was on most of the time. So our air conditioning, as we would drive down Route One, would be to roll the windows down all the way, and we would bring blankets in the winter. The heat didn't work that well.

Brian Reardon: No.

Lisa Belisle: And so I remember this all with such fondness, because it was the first car that he and I knew together, and it was also the thing he could afford. He bought it from his college friend, who bought it from somebody else, and it had already been going for probably 15 years by that time. So there's such nostalgia and such connection to memories just in that description that I had. So I'm imagining that other people who are like you, looking at Airstreams and tractors and VWs, there is that connection to something in their past that brings up something really special and beautiful.

Brian Reardon: It's interesting to hear that you had a VW. One of my sisters had one in college, and forever it was heating your foot. I think those vents are always on for some reason. Winter, summer, fall, that car. Yeah, that was a midnight blue colored bug. I think she'll laugh when she hears of this. It's hard to remember that. Yeah, it's interesting, the subject matters that you can come up with when painting, what strikes your fancy, and how it's tractors and cars and unique shapes.

Lisa Belisle: And I do think there's actually something also interesting about the lack of safety. I can't speak to tractors, but I know that the VWs, my mom described on the January night that she was going to the hospital with my father, and she was in labor with me, they actually put my grandmother in the backseat of their VW Bug sort of as ballast, because it wasn't very safe in the snow. So these are not practical things that we're dealing with. So there's even the sense, somewhat, of a little bit living on the edge, a little bit of recklessness around owning these things, which is sort of part of the charm. And yet I don't know that I would want my children now to have one, but it was an era.

Brian Reardon: To read about the charm is probably better than to expose yourself to the dangers of reckless machinery. But it is fun to see that they're still on the road, and safe.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. Now they have safe versions of these things. Which is not to disparage that company at all. It's just what it was at the time.

Brian Reardon: Sure. Oh yeah. I do remember them not having a fabulous reputation for when they got in an accident. I don't think my mother was very fond of them because of that.

Lisa Belisle: And this whole conversation I love so much, because one of the things you brought up when we were asking you questions ahead of time was Joseph Campbell and the idea of following your bliss, and this idea that you're painting things that make you happy, that you decided to become an artist because it was the thing that you connected with. And you had a career that kind of put food on the table, but you always remained true to this idea of being an artist, because it was the thing that, for whatever reason, you didn't have to explain it, it was the thing that you were meant to do. This was following your bliss.

Brian Reardon: Again, I got very lucky in falling into educational publishing, at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for 20-plus years. And some of that work dovetailed with painting. And it took some mental leap to find your way in that world, where you can find art happening somewhat in a mathematical way in design, that helped enrich the life, that you felt like you're on the right path, that it's using your abilities to greater or lesser degree. And all the while painting in the background, because it's whether it's just a need that you return to for that enrichment, for better or for worse, a way to describe it, it makes you happy. And if you can do it and you find time is suspended, you're in a bit of bliss, you somewhat feel that you're on the right way, you're doing what you should be doing or could be doing. Meanwhile, keeping your worldly needs accomplished by the day job, food, keeping the bear at the door basically, which is a fabulous thing too. So I've been very lucky in that manner, of getting work that shades into artistic endeavors, and working with people that were just super in helping along those ways.

Lisa Belisle: So that piece is something that I always find fascinating. So you're keeping the bear at the door job, and then you have the work that makes you happy. And then at some point you think, I'd like to bring this work out into the light of day.

Brian Reardon: Yes.

Lisa Belisle: And that does take, I think oftentimes, encouragement from other people, which I believe you have had, in order to say, I'm going to seek representation from a gallery, for example. I'm going to become affiliated with the Portland Art Gallery. That's a very different and other skillset that you need to have as well.

Brian Reardon: Very different. Portland Art Gallery has been fantastic in promotion. And the Wright Gallery, Allison Smith in Kennebunkport. My friends the Bayas, Tim Baya and Amy and their mom, they got me to show up at Kennebunkport at an annual Kennebunkport River Club art show in August. Fantastic setting. And I got to meet a lot of terrific people, and got to meet Emma, Emma Wilson, at that show, and introduced myself and said, hey, what do you think of my work coming up to your gallery? And she said, look at our website and pursue that. And over time, I got the chance to show here. But yeah, having friends in Boston, I'm in a gallery down there that is a collaborative gallery, the Atlantic Works Gallery in East Boston, and they're very open to people who are first time stepping into the art world, and giving you a showcase where you can present your work. And the steps of doing that is great, it allows you to fall without skinning your knees too hard, that type of feeling, like it's going to be okay. But do put yourself out there, do what you've been training to do. And in all things, if you're a great skater, skate, or can throw a ball, well, throw the ball well. Be what you've developed to be. And yeah, the people have been fantastic in helping, really supportive, my friends. I don't know if I named them all.

Lisa Belisle: Like you're winning an Oscar. All the people I'd like to thank.

Brian Reardon: And my family's always been terrific. And I don't know, you come from a large family, and it can be great fun, boisterous, love that. And of the group, I'm one of the quieter ones, so I may not be noisy, but I take great joy in the noise, and I love that when we are all together. And they're always encouraging and always curious about how things are going. And the same with my friends, and they're kind enough to put my work on their walls in the Boston area as well. And yeah, good friends that I have. A very good artist friend, Walter Kopec, who's opened my ideas to what's possible. And he is a curious individual, in a great way, of looking at art and wanting to see where it can go. He's more conceptual in his work and execution, but it's a very rewarding work to see for the viewer. I like that. It's when you look at a piece and you get a kick out of it, it makes, I think, whether the artist knows it or not, a nice web of life. I had a professor once at school who was a very, very witty gentleman. And he had made a display, a small living room display that you could hold in your hand. It was in the corner of a large gallery, so you had to stoop down to look at it, and you're like, what is this about? And I was near somebody and they're looking at it, and they picked the little stuffed ottoman chair up, and on the bottom of the chair it says, please put it back down. And that was the whole piece, to get somebody to pick it up and to be told to put it back. And it just made me so happy to see that. And knowing this professor, I think he was happy too. So finding a connectivity with friends and family, viewers that come to look at work, I like that idea.

Lisa Belisle: And I think that's such a great thing, that I can also relate to. When I go to the art gallery, and I'm there at least once a month because of the openings, and I walk around, I feel kind of bathed in the enjoyment of the art, and also connecting with other people who are enjoying the art. And to do something for no other reason than that it either makes you happy or somehow engenders an emotion within. That's not something that we always have the ability to do in day-to-day lives.

Brian Reardon: It's a luxury. Yeah. I think I agree. It is a luxury to spend time soaking something in. And selfishly, I try to find that when I run to the museum. And I am horrible, because I have heroes that I run to go see in the museum. I would look for more wide-ranging experiences in the art, but often it's the desire to look and research something that I'm working through in handling of the medium, and to see how somebody had executed it before, to a great degree, usually, because it's in a museum, for gosh sakes, and I might want to pick up that idea on how to get something done. And then to see the humor in the execution, and some just people showing off with the brushwork, Sargent, and to see some of those transitions with his work and others. It's like in sports, seeing a well-done execution of a pitch, a hit.

Lisa Belisle: I can appreciate this. I can appreciate what you're saying about, it can be very subtle. It can be a very small thing, and you can look at something and just think, wow, no rational reason, wow. I love the showing off at the brush strokes that you're describing, of Sargent, because this understanding that back when he was painting, there probably was something that he was really enjoying, that aspect of his work.

Brian Reardon: It's tough, when you look at his work, to say, boy, he's at a very incredible level, and the rest of us are with spoons and peanut butter down low and working away. But yeah, there's one, it's a horse hoof, I think it's a French, I'm sorry I'm not remembering it, but it's one of these grand salon pieces that's 28 feet by 16 feet, and the horse hoof in the lower corner is only part of it's painted. And the rest of it's open canvas, which is sort of a beautiful warm olive tan. You step back three feet and it all snaps together as the horse hoof. But you walk up and you see it's an incomplete, in a way, execution, that you would from that period of painting, where all the canvas is covered with some degree of paint, and this individual left it open on the foot, and it's just a cheeky move. It's a curveball when you expected a fastball, when looking at it. It makes me laugh.

Lisa Belisle: There is something to that, as you and I are talking, this idea of humor that, it really appeals to me, because.