Norwalk exhibit captures bond between artist and mentor
DANBURY ARTIST’S PAINTINGS ARE ON DISPLAY AT NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM
Danbury artist Scott Brundage, known for his fantasy watercolors, currently has two original works featured at the Norman Rockwell Museum’s new exhibition, “Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration,” on view at the Stockbridge, Mass., museum through Oct. 31.
“I still can hardly believe I was chosen for inclusion in this show,” Brundage said. “My work isn’t just hanging next to my illustration heroes, but their work is hanging next to their illustration heroes — golden age illustration legends, then the people they inspired, then me. It’s surreal.”
The “Enchanted” exhibition features more than 100 artists over the course of 500 years with pieces featuring fantasy archetypes.
“The dark humor of (illustrators) Charles Addams and Edward Gorey is apparent in [Brundage’s] illustrations, which convey a sense of sweetness with a subtle nod to the sinister,” said Stephanie Plunkett, deputy director of the museum and chief curator for the “Enchanted” exhibit. “Scott’s imagery for books, magazines, and newspapers has been significant in the field, and we’ve been honored to highlight the work of such an accomplished artist.”
Growing up in Danbury, Brundage said his parents encouraged him to become an artist from an early age.
“They got me into cartooning classes young when they saw how disinterested I was in sports,” Brundage said. He also took as many art classes as Danbury High School would allow and quickly discovered a passion for painting fantasy.
“As a genre, fantasy is an opportunity to try and sell any idea to your audience,” Brundage said. “Something as bizarre as a giant monster made of twigs and slime can become believable through the art form. Aliens live among us, magic is real, dragons exist and artists like myself are lucky enough to paint those things for a living.”
Brundage said his featured paintings are the result of his efforts to take his art into a new market.
“The first, ‘Stacy McGee vs. The Horror,’ was a self-generated painting that I made with the explicit purpose of getting book cover work,” Brundage said. “When I created it, I was trying very hard to break into the book cover market but needed samples that would show that my skills were valuable in that market. An image with characters that would fit a middle-grade book cover, in a dynamic group composition with as much drama as possible, and it ended up one of my best efforts.”
The second painting was a direct result of the first — one of a series of book covers for the “Scaremaster” series about a book that makes scary stories come to life. The result was the cover of the 2016 book “Swamp Scarefest” by B.A. Frade and Stephanie True Peters.
“This niche was my bread and butter for a couple years —scary monsters that are more goofy than actually upsetting, and super fun for me to draw and kids to read about,” the artist said. “This particular cover illustration was for ‘Swamp Scarefest’ where kids read from the ‘Scaremaster’ book and create a swamp creature.”
He said he fell into watercolors by default, having a lot of experience with them by the time he got to art school.
“I’d been doodling and taking classes all through middle and high school, experimenting with inks and watercolor whenever I wanted to bring color into my work,” he said. “At art school, I tried a lot of different media, but watercolor just came so naturally that I was encouraged to not fight what was already working. Instead, I leaned into watercolor even more and just ran with it.”
Over his career, Brundage’s art has been showcased in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post amongst others.
Brundage added that he was shocked and flattered to learn that the museum provided a lengthy writeup with his art as he didn’t provide one for the show.
“Someone researched me and wrote a bio, which was amazingly accurate. It shocked me,” he said.
For more information about the exhibit, visit nrm.org.