By Rachel Kalina
Van Brunt's Baldwin residence is covered in his paintings. Some are abstract and include found objects like branches (his current favorite material), while others are more traditional and feature landscapes from areas like Orient Point and the Oceanside Nature Preserve. A typesetter at a printing company by trade, Van Brunt likes to keep in touch with his artistic schooling and finds the time to paint everyday.
"It's for myself," Van Brunt said, "but I always have it in the back of my mind that I'd like to exhibit the pieces."
Van Brunt has been doing just that, and his work has been exhibited in galleries and New York City restaurants, and they can also be found hanging on the wall's of his buyers' local and far-reaching homes. The painting's hanging on his own walls - the ones "subject to change," as Van Brunt put it - are a source of pride not only for him, but for wife Gail as well.
"I love them. They express him," Gail Van Brunt said of her husband's paintings. She prefers those he finishes in a rush she said, because "Good stuff comes out of it."
Sometimes, Gail Van Brunt must act as the buffer between her home and her husband's art studio in the garage outside. When Van Brunt gets it in his mind to re-do a painting hanging in the living room, bathroom, bedroom, or kitchen, she takes it right out of his hands. Even now, she's thinking about a beloved landscape sitting in the studio - awaiting a fate she can't bear to see it endure. She plans to snag it back, but Van Brunt said she couldn't have it. It's a familiar argument.
"If you ever did an infrared of any of my paintings," Van Brunt said, "You'd find about 40,000 other paintings under there."
Van Brunt's garage is a true artist's studio. It is full of paint brushes, works-in-progress both large and small, canvases, art magazines, found objects (plenty of twigs), wooden panels, tubes of oils and jars of acrylics. Neighbors frequently visit to commend his work, and Van Brunt's two-and six-year-old sons can be seen popping in as he's working.
As an artist, Van Brunt finds inspiration while listening to jazz, blue grass, or Fordham University's radio station while he paints. Eventually, Van Brunt plans to turn his studio into a gallery for other Baldwin residents and artists to enjoy.
"I would like people to come in who have a little bit of a background in art and are looking for something more than to just fill up a wall," he said of his ideal future patron. "If they see something they like, they could tell me why they like it, and we could have a dialogue."
Also in the studio are inspirational photos of landscapes from vacation spots in Maine, where Van Brunt got his degree in print- making at the Maine College of Art. His painting Master's was later obtained from Ohio University. Although some works are reminiscent of the impressionist or abstract expressionist works he learned about, Van Brunt's style is all his own.
"I do a variety of different things," Van Brunt said of his art strewn about the garage. "I do a lot of abstract work, and I do landscapes. I keep my eyes open. My training is diverse. I never lock down on one particular format or style, I change as the times goes by."
His paintings also change in the course of creating them as they take on "a life of their own," Van Brunt said. An accidental mixing of colors on his palate can result in a jellyfish's body tone, or a field's hue at sunset. Time spent on an individual piece ranges from a single evening to a series of weeks. He is constantly juggling the paintings on which he works, starting on one while he waits for an area of another to dry.
Van Brunt likes to use large brushes and rags to paint, and he recently went through a phase of including found wooden panels on his canvases. He usually doesn't realize the message in his paintings until he's three-quarters of the way done with them.
"I don't like to think about it too much," he said. "I just dive in and respond to what happens on the canvas," unless the work is commissioned and must follow a specific idea, he added.
As for Gail Van Brunt, she jokes that she never has to invest in art. She is particularly fond of a large painting hanging in the dining room, for which a builder once offered her free siding on the house if he could have it. It's still there.
Thinking on his favorite artistic accomplishment to date, Van Brunt said, "I have a full page reproduction in The Encyclopedia of Living artists. I've always been kind of proud of that."
But of course, the painting of a chair featured in this book of artists looks nothing like it does as it now hangs on Van Brunt's living room wall. Once it got there, all bets were off.
