THIS IS THE PLACE FOR DISCOVERIES AND DISCUSSIONS OF THE MOST INVENTIVE ART FORMS – ALL KINDS OF ART THAT IS FAR-OUT, FANTASTIC, FREE-SPIRITED, FUN, FUNKY, PHENOMENAL AND GOOD FOR THE SOUL. (MAMA CALLED IT SUI GENERIS)
SUBSCRIBE, BABY. RIGHT NOW!

THIS MONTH, AS THE DAYS GROW SHORTER, AND WINTER LOOMS, WE POKE AROUND IN THE PENUMBRAE AND CONTEMPLATE THE EPHEMERAL, ENCHANTING NATURE OF THE PLAY OF LIGHT AND SILHOUETTED FORMS THAT ARE THE MAGICAL STUFF OF SHADOWS. EVEN A LITTLE MOUSE CAN CAST ONE, BUT THINK BIG, LIKE THE LATE ASTROPHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING, WHO ONCE OBSERVED: “THERE COULD BE SHADOW GALAXIES, SHADOW STARS, AND EVEN SHADOW PEOPLE.”

IN THIS ISSUE, DON'T MISS THESE FEATURES
Editor’s Letter
What the heck is brutjournal?
by Edward M. Gómez
In the southern U.S.A.
Vernacular art in the Deep South: Phillip March Jones’s color Polaroid photos, from his book Points of Departure, of homemade, spontaneously created roadside shrines to commemorate the victims of fatal auto accidents.
In the studio
In-depth interview: The painter Suzan Frecon has spent her long career investigating — and repeatedly falling deeply in love with — the expressive power of color, glorious color. Here, she explains her working methods, including the mixing of her own pigments.
Exclusive: The Valton Tyler film
Valton Tyler: Flesh is Fiction, Edward M. Gómez and Chris Shields' 2017 docu-film about the Texas-based painter of bizarre, otherworldly, techno-baroque landscapes is available here; read our article and view the film, free of charge. Discover Valton’s world!
LEARNING TO LOVE THE SHADOW WORLD
Read More
DIALOGUE: TWO ARTISTS SAY IT WITH SHADOWS
Back when the pandemic began, brutjournal’s visual director, the photographer Bill Westmoreland, and the artist Mimi Young spontaneously started a daily exchange of photos of shadows. Here, they examine the diversity and the allure of the images they’ve captured.
Read More
CAPTURING SHADOWS IN THIN WASHES OF PAINT
The multi-genre artist Steven Hirsch has translated the delicate, fugitive character of shadows, which, as a photographer, he finds endlessly intriguing, into painted images made up of fine, transparent, mostly monochromatic washes. Here, a portfolio of the artist’s shadow pictures.
Read More
IN A NEW EXHIBITION IN LONDON, A FRESH, BROADER LOOK AT HORROR AND THE HORRIFIC
With The Horror Show!, Somerset House, an innovative cultural center, looks not only at tropes and ideas that have long been associated with the horror genre but also more broadly at what may be regarded as horrific. Cathy Ward, our London-based artist-correspondent, reports. Free-access article.
Read More
INTERVIEW: PAINTER SUZAN FRECON’S LIFELONG EXPLORATION OF COLOR AND FORM
In Suzan Frecon’s monumental-feeling and often large-scale paintings, color and form conjoin with perfect pitch in powerfully expressive, enigmatic abstract images. Frecon has long mixed her own color-rich oil paints. Here, she tells us about her abiding interest in color. Free-access article.
Read More
WE’LL DRINK TO THAT: THE CAMPAIGN TO SAVE TRADER VIC’S LONDON, WHICH MUST CLOSE SOON
Located in the basement of the London Hilton on Park Lane, the British capital’s branch of a famous American bar-restaurant chain known for its Polynesian décor and colorful cocktails is being forced to close — by Dec. 31, 2022. Cathy Ward reports about efforts to keep it going and to preserve its art-filled interior. Free-access article.
Read More