Amazing Grace

Making visible, for Me, is about the Asking of Questions
Questions prompt search, leading to invention, resulting in discovery.  This is a process that sparks new ways of realizing my sensibility and voice.  The kind of information Brooker needs as an artist is the result of a constant search.  The information he uses becomes a vehicle that best enables and encourages discovery, invention, and the process of “making visible.”

Brooker’s work explores a modified figure/ground relationship: the division of the picture plane into three fields of space.  In this context, shape defines and organizes the pictorial space.  The format is rectangular with either a square, vertical or horizontal orientation.  

At the foundation of his approach is the grid, a framework of vertical and horizontal lines, both actual and implied, that act as a skeletal support upon which the image is constructed.  The use and function of the line is to control the relationship within the overall composition.
 
Spontaneity is a part of Brooker’s process, not as an impulsive act, but rather as a series of considered decisions – immediate, but with purpose and direction, as in a jazz or gospel composition.  Light and color are the final elements that quicken his interest.  

Light (in his work) is a question of context and comparison.  Brooker seeks to create a sense of light that results from a comparison of the four elements of color: hue, value, chroma, and temperature.  

Ultimately, Brooker explores and investigates pictorial space, not attempting to be imitative, rather to create an inner space, something cosmic and eternal and imagined as realized in jazz and poetry.  

His work often begins with a question, leading to investigation, resulting in inventions and discovery.  He sees his work as shorthand for the real, in essence a different sense of reality.

Commission made for the Pennsylvania Convention Center