Brian Soden

So, there are bad art days, but then every once in a while......

Last year, I'd been drinking beer with Clair Garman in my backyard and decided to take a picture of some trees and apartment buildings through the glass of beer. (Yes, this is normal for me, and no, it was my first beer.) It was a cool photo, the trees were distorted and looked like they were lit from within. I used the photo to start the paintings, and they sucked. I found these two old canvases in storage a couple days ago - they were still awful.

However, these two canvases made great under-paintings, basically a red wash or background on which I could start another painting. So, I pulled out my oils, added medium, and got to work. I didn't know what I was going to do - I was just playing around with paint. But quickly the painting started to look like fire. So that's what I did - fire. Without really realizing what was up, I turned the apartment building into a house. And before you knew it, the house was threatened by fire, and was burning. Then it hit me - the painting was about Brian Soden.

Brian was my Volunteer-for-Youth younger brother who died in a house fire. I saw Brian every Sunday for a couple of years, for half the day. I was mentoring him while in my freshman and sophomore year at Carleton. Brian had a tough life: dad in jail, no money, and living in an old farmhouse in Northfield, Minnesota with his younger brother and sister and unemployed mother. He was smart, but needed someone to show him what was possible.

One day in the early spring and in the middle of the night, the old furnace caught fire. Brian woke up, smelled the smoke, and got out of the house. But he was a really great kid. He decided to go back inside and save his brother and sister. He went in, and died - never realizing that his brother and sister and mom made it outside on their own.

These paintings are raw, full of the awesome power of fire, and the pathos of love and loss. In the second painting, a figure just emerged - I did not plan it but there it is. I don't know where the paintings came from, for me it is a very unusual experiment in letting process dictate the subject.

These paintings are for Brian Soden, my adopted little brother, wanna-be rocket scientist, a sweet kid with a big heart.