She is no longer in the box

     The moon pours over a low set of trees as you feel yourself trudging through thick white snow to either the barn that sits off to your left or to the two-story white house that glistens against the shadow of trees Further ahead. The night is so clear you can see the Heavens above and you wrap your coat more tightly sensing the crisp air of a country night. With a chill you link and realize that Marge Brandt has transported you into a painting of magical proportions with “Supper Time.” These are the paintings, for which Marge Brandt, watercolorist and award winner from Wapakoneta, Ohio has been known, since she started with wonderful bleeding colors in 1972. Beautiful, soft realistic landscapes and flowers dot the walls of art enthusiasts.

     Now she is not only shocking the local art community, but also others beyond her Buckeye roots with bold, bright colors of acrylic paint that zing across the canvas with minds all of their own, and she loves every minute of it. Color splashes across a 30×48 piece of canvas of rough edges with very little thought of borders and boundaries. She took her own advice and decided to “get out of the box” with large acrylic abstract paintings.

     She is no stranger to the acrylic. She learned acrylics in 1968 when she took her first class at the local high school. She then would travel 62 miles, 1 day a week for 50 weeks to Springfield to learn composition and design by Betty Gnagi. She learned the art of pouring with watercolors from Steve Blackburn and painting of lace with Arleta Peck. She gave back to the community by opening up her own studio in her home and gave classes for several years. From these and many others she attributes her knowledge and some of her success. She lovingly proclaims that her biggest fan and worst critic is her husband Bob of 59 years.

     Through all the long years, Marge’s styles of painting, though different have a commonality, being: Color. With watercolors she loves to watch the colors bleed into each other making use of their shadows and light on the palette. Acrylics work with a will all their own. She never knows what to do until she sees the colors. She loves to pour the colors onto the canvas, sometimes mix with water and then have a cup of coffee as the colors mix, separate, and meld into each other. She proceeds to set up and have the colors speak to her.

     Inspiration from these new paintings comes in many forms: Christian motifs, songs, magazine pictures, or whatever catches her fancy, however sometimes the inspiration is based on titles. “In every painting I also weave in a cross,” says artist Brandt.

     Marge holds firmly a belief that naming a painting is almost as important as the painting itself. She realized how important titles were to art when she first started showing her work. She laughingly tells of her first show that occurred in a chicken house. She had a painting with a barn that had a lane that went towards the back of the landscape and disappeared. A wife mentioned to her husband that it looked like the place they use to go to and neck. When they left she quickly titled it, “The End of Lovers Lane” – and it sold to the next couple. Her favorite painting is titled, “Back in Puddle of Water.” Her new abstract series is a love series with titles, “Besame Mucho” (Kiss me a lot) and “Solamente Una vez” (You belong to my heart.) Her favorite title needing no translation is “Kiss Me Quick and Don’t Slobber.”

     With bold colorful paintings and titles that inspire the imagination, Marge is definitely “I’m doing my own thing and having fun with it.” Her paintings can be found at local art shows in Wapakoneta, a city noted for the home of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum and the Riverside Art Center where she is President. Other places to catch her work are in Florida with her oldest daughter Linda Brandt, impressionist artist and author and in California with her youngest son David, an abstract artist.

     To view a full range of this artist’s works, you can email Marge at wapakartist@yahoo.com.  †

Editor’s note: First published in print, Marge Brandt was the Cover Section artist/Art-to-Art Palette Journal, 2008-09 Fall/Winter, Vol20No3. The print version can be viewed at www.scribd.com/arttoartpalette/documents. Since this original feature,  Marge sent her forever love, Robert L. Brandt (1925-2010) to a heavenly land on July 21, 2010.