Brian Despain
The Ghost Menagerie

September 12th - October 4th 2025

Opening night reception Friday, September 12th 6-9pm

Please contact us to get larger images , detail images, or a video walk around of a piece!

Long time exhibiting artist Brian Despain returns to the gallery (after a stint of raising a family in the country) with an incredible new series of allegorical paintings. Painted in his trademark stormy blues, creams, and ochre palette- Brian has set aside the robot protagonists he was known for to explore a more nuanced menagerie of living animals as symbolic characters. These animals are often mythically charged in numerous cultures adding extra layers of archetypal meaning. Themes of endlessly cycling duality and the push pull of the light vs the dark, life and death create a compelling narrative, created to be seductively beautiful but slightly disconcerting at the same time. In this show, each piece can stand alone, but also weave together and reference each other- creating a cyclic, enigmatic story.

“In all of us there exists a myriad of personas. Day to day, moment to moment, our very idiom is in flux, forever being shaped by situation and need. The outward face of our being is shaped by ideas, learned behaviors, instinct and emotion all working or warring to be the front that is presented to the outside world. These faces, the timid, the brave, the meek, the mighty, the sinful and the pure are the animals that live inside us. They are the owl, the rabbit, the swan, and the bee. They are the snake and the swallow. Our very being is writ in metaphorical tooth and claw, feather and fur. We learn, we shift, we grow and we change. Each personality living, dying, then being reincarnated anew, the cycle ever turning until one day, all the cages of our minds are flung wide and all that we are is set free. We are the ghost menagerie.” - Brian Despain

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