Hank Brusselback
The Man of the Year

This exhibition is a sequel to Brusselback's Crying Presidents, the series of expressionist paintings and sculptures that suggest the possibility of change and compassion in the hearts of powerful wartime leaders. The work for Man of The Year was created over the past several months, inspired by the recent presidential election, current international affairs and Time magazine's Man of the Year for 2004.

 Brusselback describes his work as “marinating art in politics.” His poignant, distorted portraits serve as both direct social commentary and as a visual tool to engage the viewers to question the content in his narrative scenes. Brusselback works in a potent Neo-Fauvist pallet that inspires a fin de siecle mood reminiscent of German Expressionist painters like Kirshner and Munch. His work is an excellent example of Bram Dijkstra's description of how expressionism ”calls upon us to acknowledge the raw, emotional core of experience and demands that we confront the inner conflicts that make us human."

Brusselback is represented by Tupelo Road Gallery in Taos, New Mexico, and has shown nationally at institutions like the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the Fransworth Museum in Rockland, Maine.