Local Artist Brook Meinhardt to have Solo Show

Brook Meinhardt, self portrait

Painter and illustrator Brook Meinhardt, an Orcas resident for the past five years, will have her first solo show at the Orcas Center in March, with an opening Friday, March 4^th at 5:30.

Brook was born and raised in New York City, and studied art at The School of Visual Arts, and Cooper Union.

Growing up in Manhattan the daughter of two architects, Meinhardt grew up surrounded by art. Her Harvard-trained father worked for Richard Meier, and a Frank Stella hung in their living room.  Her father took her to see Claus Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Louise Nevelson, and Louise Bourgeois shows in SOHO when she was a child. She has always been surrounded and inspired by structure, form and function.

“I was very drawn to the dimensionality of their work,” she says. “The city was and is a constant mass of these things. I spent countless hours wandering the streets, watching buildings go up and come down; watching the ever-changing worlds on the top of buildings, looking up at all that is there.  Leaving the city, I find my self drawn to trees, I guess for the many of the same reasons.”

Her paintings, drawings and portraits, some 3-D constructions made from cardboard, have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, TIME magazine, and The Wall Street Journal amongst many others.  She’s also done commercial illustration work for companies like The Gap, MTV, Pottery Barn, Old Navy, Barney’s New York, and Sephora.

Meinhardt started painting landscapes in 2001, when her son, Henry Moe, was born. She was inspired by their many walks in Boston’s Planting Fields Arboretum and Olmstead-designed parks.

Most of her recent paintings have been directly inspired by the beauty of the San Juan Islands. Brook continues to do privately commissioned portraits, and is also currently doing Web-based illustrations locally, for Orcasnet, Inc.

Her recent landscape paintings will be featured in the Orcas Center show, along side much of her illustration and 3-D work.

For a preview, visit Brook’s Website at www.brookmeinhardt.com