Michael Brophy
Michael Brophy was born in NW Portland in 1960 and grew up near Forest Park, one of the biggest urban forest reserves in the United States- and this park inspired his love for Pacific Northwest landscape. Brophy has stayed in Portland to this day, demonstrating his love of the landscape through his art. He originally studied at the University of Oregon, however, when he studied abroad at the College International in Florence, Italy, the European art of Caravaggio, Tintoretto, and Titian inspired him. Due to this life changing experience, Brophy dopped out of the University of Oregon and instead pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts at PNCA in 1985.
Brophy is a multifaceted artist who creates grand paintings with odes to Romanticism and imbued with a self proclaimed sense of irony that comments on environmental issues. Brophy’s art emulates the clean lines and smooth finish of comic strips (something he loved as a child), the tradition of the Sublime, the draughtsmanship of Renaissance masters, the drama of Baroque art, and the Pacific Northwest earth-toned palette. And while his paintings are visually pleasing, they convey a profound message about our modern-day relationship with the land. According to the book Romantic Visions of Michael Brophy by Rock Hushka, in Brophy’s works, “You see a landscape painting informed by the venerable traditions of the genre… his version of the scene’s history… the environmental impact that reshaped the territory” (11).
Often Brophy’s works are sweeping views of landscape, clear-cut forests, or other devastated areas of land with a lone male figure or Rückenfigur (German for back figure) looking out at the land. This figure was a trope of Romanticism, popularized in the 19th century with artists such as Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) and his painting Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog. These figures look out over the vastness of nature invoking the awe and anxiety of the Sublime, but as Brophy’s works comment of the devastation of the land, he creates an anti-Sublime. This anti-Sublime still forces viewers to think of their individual relationship with nature but related to the way that society impacts nature and how we as viewers are a part of that system. He acknowledges the tradition in order to subvert it and shows the true environmental consequences of western White settlement. He does this instead of showing the land as a utopia because that was a myth used to justify Manifest Destiny; the land was inhabited by people, it wasn’t a lonesome paradise waiting to be settled as many western White settlers thought of it as.
Brophy paints our ecological reality with a style that is used to paint traditional subject matter such as religious or historical events; thus, his paintings feel ironic in their messaging versus their look. This is why Brophy’s paintings are layered; he imbues his landscape with a sense of grandeur but then shows burnt forests, houses where nature was, and modern-day figures walking around. Layers of time, art history, and civilization appear in his works. As viewers, we are supposed to recognize this and think of our place in this modern-day relationship between society and nature.