Brendan Monroe

Perfectly capable of painting in acrylics, drawing with ink, sculpting with wood and silkscreen printing, Brendan Monroe, aka The Blob, is an American artist who’s constantly challenging himself with new ideas. Unable to choose the favorite, creating a diverse portfolio, keeping things fresh by following simple mantra – when he’s bored with a technique or medium, he moves on to something completely different. Charming and otherworldly, his work keeps a latent base of visual familiarity in both landscapes and figures. With a visual vocabulary inspired by scientific processes and internal landscapes, Monroe forges drawings, paintings, sculptures and occasional commissioned illustrations.

His work possesses a dream-like quality, and it comes as no surprise since he draws inspiration from his dreams, especially for narratives. Other sources include popular science fiction such as Star Wars and things like The Hobbit and Wheel of Time. More recently, he’s been heavily influenced by the real science and ways it is happening. Undoubtedly a figurative artist, Monroe has made his figures go a long way from being a sort of recurring characters to being faceless beings. These beings are basically the inhabitants of the worlds or scenes he makes. In order to become more simplified, they have lost their features, like faces, hands and feet. “They’re still related but I’ve found that I like them without those things because they really don’t need them” and they are “very understandable without having to have eyes or other human features.”