Titus Michaël Brein, artist
1 oktober 1966, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Born in an atelier, brought up in nature, and since working and travelling between cities, countries, stories & landscapes. Raised by ‘Avant la Lettre parents’, an artist and a yoga teacher, they showed him the beauty of the world, as well as some discipline. Being a keen photographer since the last three decades, he has also been painting for the last twenty years. One of his main disciplines 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 he is now particularly engaged in the art of a new photo media, a unique fine art photography, thus compiling an impressive oeuvre.
His distinctive works depict their classic 17th-century themes such as land- and cityscapes, vanitas paintings, still life arrangements and even abstract images. It is about the juxtaposition between the eternal and the temporal, beauty and decay, appearing and disappearing. Esthetic & surrealism are never far away in his art pieces, still being contemporary. The innovative colorful artworks are all made in a process from idea, vision, through his lenses and own created filters to accomplish the unique versatile pieces. The works of Titus are therefore intriguing, both vigorous & minimalistic.
Usually working on subjects with models or still life in his Amsterdam based grand studio or travelling in nature, every image is containing a few stories as well as literally a few (oil) pigment layers and sometimes matte layers, a reminiscence with the dutch, italian and spanish classic painters. His work is collected by national and international clientèle and galleries.
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. He worked with many, now famous photographers and some master-painters, and their influence helped him ripen his ideas and techniques. His father’s master technique about watercolors, and the many layers of the glacis of his oil-paintings, contributed to the way Titus developed the extraordinaire print, paint and photo arts.
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 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 very new techniques, skills and materials, expressed in New Photo Media / Photo Fusion. The last collection of his work combines a whole lot of materials which were never used in the art of photography ever before. This combination of several skills creates an approach to the ideal image he has been striving for, although it is a new unique process he developed for years, with so many possibilities to explore. It’s also very much about a multi-layered image, reviewing reality is it never really is as what man
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 non figurative 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 aesthetics to a new surprising image; the interaction with (day) light makes that two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional; serene, transparent and dynamic, communicating with the observer.
Enjoying the experiment, his new innovative Photo Phusion work combines photography, prints, pigments, glass, oil colors, precious metals and other materials into fine art images. The multiple layered pieces merge transparently into a multidimensional symbiosis of image, content and thoughts. Through ongoing intense investigations and technical process, the artist shows you/ the viewer authentic, unique art-pieces, only showing little at a time, revealing parts of an underlying message. Like real life this art can’t be seen immediately, it needs to descent a while, not to explode in one’s face, but to add some aesthetic value to the beholder, together with a story which will be told by the content.
All the art-pieces are unique, and made from the first to the last steps of the process by the artist.
His work is collected by international galleries & private clients.