Why Pop-Surrealist Painter Troy Brooks Likes the Glamour of Old Hollywood

The Editors

 

Downtown Los Angeles’s Corey Helford Gallery is currently featuring a solo show of acclaimed Ontario, Canada-based contemporary surrealist painter Troy Brooks, entitled Through A Glass Darkly, in Gallery 3.

 

Famous for his surrealistic portraits of elongated women and influenced by a mixture of classic Hollywood imagery and ancient mythology, Brooks’s paintings evoke and era of old-fashioned  glamour. His impact on the Pop-Surrealist movement is widely recognized.

 

As Brooks explains, “Besides female characters being the eternal protagonist in my work, another central component has always been the dazzling glamour and grandeur of Old Hollywood. From the world-weary vamps of the Silent Era to the elegant clotheshorses of the 1930s, to the square-shouldered career woman of wartime women’s pictures, these personas monopolized my imagination. I picked up a rabid interest in classic cinema at a very early age, spending hours in the local library sketching ghostly actresses from classic cinema photography books. The first old film I remember seeing at 4 years old was Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, a gothic tragedy that haunted me with its twisted decayed glamour. It would ultimately have an enormous impact on my creative tone.”

                                                                                                                       

The exhibit is on view through September 26, 2020. For more information about this exhibit, visit Corey Helford Gallery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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All images courtesy of Corey Helford Gallery
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