Braahaus Studio
Fine Art, Fine Crafts and Curious Creations from the Little Wakarusa Valley
in the rolling hills, woods, and prairies
of rural Douglas County in Eastern Kansas
Contact Mick:
1032 E. 2100 Rd.
Eudora, Kansas 66025
785.542.3829
braahaus@gmail.com
Michael G.
Braa (Mick)
Artist, Curmudgeon & Sometimes Writer
Artist, Curmudgeon & Sometimes Writer
Please adjust your screen for best fit!
April 2022:
Just a sampling of images to catch your eye....I have been inactive for an embarrassing amount of time due to declining spine and joint issues. As many know, all those domestic chores are more time consuming when you are over..well almost 70?? 2nd knee replacement and open spine surgery pending. Hope to finally start and/or finish new artwork in the fall--assuming I get my super messy studio building in order, HA!!...plus build a new website...meanwhile I served on the board of our local library for 8 years, helped to write a library transistion bill passed by the Kansas Legislature, avoided C-virus, joined a CSA for all our warm season organic foods, I may have my art featured on label for a new local wine variety...and would really like to spend a relaxing two-week food fest in Taos with Barbara, my super wife of almost 46 years.
I was trained
primarily as a designer, graphic illustrator and painter of traditional still-life, landscape and representational images, but now I mostly explore 2-D space using overlapping forms, images and decorative motifs to produce highly creative compositions that evolve mostly from my imagination. In this way most of my
work is “creative synthesis” rather than just the imitation or rendering of real
scenes, subjects or objects.
Many recent works are heavy dye-painted fabric wall pieces ranging up to 9 feet tall. They attempt to keep the texture and soft "hand" of the fabrics—and to avoid the stiff, hard surfaces and borders of framed paintings. They evolve from random sprayed or vat-dyed patterns overworked with painting dyes and transparent fabric inks. Dyes include fiber-reactive colors that are chemically and heat-set to become part of the fabric itself. Fabrics include raw silks, linens, cottons and natural fiber blends.
Some works seem to piece together real life observations, but the elements and images have been moved, recomposed, distorted, combined with other images, re-invented, and/or fractured by overlays and borders of dark line that help to isolate, emphasize and intensify color effects as well as lead the eye into and around the image. Most images are developed as impressions and stylized compositions based on remembered, imagined or newly discovered forms.
My fantasy, abstract and fully developed compositions are “unplanned”—no theme or subject is usually predetermined—they are invented as I go, building forms and images from randomly spilled, poured, splattered or otherwise applied pigments. My creative process emphasizes color while building a matrix of interconnected forms. My work often illustrates “horrors vacuii,” the fear of empty or unfilled spaces.
I often use the same dyes and inks along with acrylic washes when painting on traditional supports like paper, gessoed panels or stretched canvas. I often return to traditional drawing and painting of landscape, figurative and still-life subjects to maintain my visual perception and skills with draftsmanship, color and spatial composition.
Mick Braa
(aka: "the hunchback of no acclaim" and/or "mickthehick")
