Titus Michaël Brein, painter and photographer
October 1, 1966, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
A great mind does not fear problems, it embraces them.
Titus Brein
has been a photographer since the last three decades. He has been painting for the last eighteen years. One of his main goals is the creation of strong visual arts, coming to expression in both fields. He received his training as a photographer at the Academy for Visual Arts (Tilburg, The Netherlands, 1989-1993), and is particularly engaged in the art of painting, since his father, Jan Jacob Brein, is a renowned water-colorist and oil painter. Currently, he also works in the field of mixed media.
After his training at the Academy, Titus develops several foci in his photographs; ranging from documentaries (largely based upon his travels) to catwalk, fashion, portraits, and from corporate and editorial work to autonomous work. In his paintings, as well as in his photographs, Titus characterizes his work with authenticity, in which scenes are not staged. When, due to the type of assignment, he is forced to use staging, his emphasis remains on reaching an emotional level, using shape and content. In both the painting and photographing fields, he shows his artistic views like he were a lens himself; grinded with a view of composition, irony and a touch of humor.
Background
Titus was raised in an artistic family, which deeply colored his own development as an artist, as well as his view on artistry in general. Having a professional painter as a father, Titus received education in the old fashioned craft of painting from a very young age on. This made it possible for him to grant his work with his own identity. His education, work experiences and studies evolve to a clear synthesis between moving and stagnant images, music, photography, painting and new mixed media. Some master classes (of Sam Drukker for example) help him ripen his ideas and techniques.
View
Titus’ passion in his painting is shaping the unsaid, the underlying of the human appearances, which makes his work paradoxical and sometimes even shocking. These works relate to his more tranquil and larger paintings with great colored patches, in a way that Titus creates space in the chaotic surrounding us. Titus paintings are images formed from his view of human existence; with the images he acts against the mere superficial beauty, the illusion of perfection and misplaced significance. To Titus, the prejudice of humanity and the lack of self-reflection are constant motivators to shape his monumental works. In his view these superficialities function to conceal the un-evolved, sometimes even monstrous, trait of humankind. Titus knows how to capture these cursory appearances in esthetic designs, as he searches the boundaries of balance between visual reality and fantasy. To him, fantasy has a purpose of building and blending lives as he interprets them. Underneath the raw symbols of his work, it shows a seductive refinement with a hint of humor. This makes his works unruly, monumental, exciting, timeless and enduring. The - sometimes conceptual – works arise during the process of painting, there are no set boundaries to warrant a lively character.
Technique
Besides his view, Titus’ knowledge of the craft of painting offers a foundation for uniqueness, comprising contemporary subjects and ‘old-fashioned’ techniques, with which he resists the fashionable tendencies. His knowledge of techniques is, for example, recognizable in the glacis techniques used on his linen, which make even the darkest of colors multi-layered and lively. The best quality of oil coloring is used for the often large sized paintings. Also, in photography as well as in mixed media, the knowledge of analogue technique makes a strong base for the digital way of working.
He also incorporates newer techniques, skills and materials, expressed in mixed media. The collection of ‘New Ideas Portraiture’ combines oil paint, glass, prints, linen, paper, ink, textile, bullion, 24-krt gold and etch to a new kind of image. This combination of several skills creates an approach to the ideal image he has been striving for, although it is a new unique process with so many possibilities to explore.
A new image which can be understand, but still surprise, many people of many parts of the globe. This cohesion of painting and photography, strengthening and freeing each other, without the image clichés, may well be the direction of his art career the next years. This recent shift in his work is clearly perceptible. The process of his development from a abstract and nonfigurative painter to a figurative-expressionist mixed media artist, shows that his wanted combination of photography and painting is expressing in a monumental new style and image, original and powerful. Abstract works based upon figurative sources amalgamate view, individuality and esthetics to a new surprising image; the interaction with (day) light makes that two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional; serene, transparent and dynamic.