Brendan Monroe

"This image is based on a page from my comic, Islands, in which the main character discovers that things are not what they have always seemed to be. The comic is about a solitary journey through a dream that mixes astrophysics and bending realities. The drawings were made in the winter and spring of 2011 while I was abroad in Sweden." – Brendan Monroe

There is an exquisite poem by Walt Whitman which describes a man drifting away from a cold scientific lecture and simply going out to gaze "in perfect silence" at the stars above his head. Brendan Monroe has taken a page from his graphic novel Islands and refashioned it as the perfectly composed "visual poem" you see here. It is hushed and haunting and minimalist in the very best sense of that often used (and abused) term. And if loneliness is what YOU detect in the work, that's all right. Pascal once wrote of "the eternal silence of infinite spaces" ... What's ultimately important is that this journey through the universe should never cease for you or anyone else.

Brendan Monroe cultivates a taste for scientific challenges, relationships to math, physics, and the surreal. He received his BFA from Art Center in 2004. He has exhibited locally and internationally at galleries such as Richard Heller in Santa Monica, Galerie L.J. in Paris and Cooper Cole in Toronto. His illustration and fine art work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker and New American Paintings.