Brian Mains:
Making Images at the Edge of Spontaneity and Deliberation

by Gordon Fuglie

Brian Mains: Paintings, Art of Greater Los Angeles in the 1990's, Vol. 1, No. 1
Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University
September 12 - October 14, 1989

From his first painting and drawing courses at the University of Houston in the early 1970's, Brian Mains was certain of his decision to become a painter. Rightly sensing that his visual aspirations were true to his inner directives, his teachers offered him suggestive guidance rather than explicit instruction. Mains' faithfulness to his gradual, evolving personal insight - the quest to know who he is, as well as rigorously adhered to work schedules, has produced over the last fifteen years a remarkable visual record of his interior journey and evolution towards an understanding of the most basic issues of human existence: reality perception in a world that is constantly changing; and ultimately, death and transcendence.

Four years after earning the Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Houston, Mains had his first one-man show in the city at the Covo de Iongh Gallery in 1977. The paintings from this period mark an evolution away from the "light and space" canvases of the early 1970's: terrifying, dark, miasmic configurations interrupted by otherworldly flickers of light. The works in the Covo de Iongh exhibition manifested Mains' inclination towards a "constructivist" approach, i.e. the building up and arranging of more or less recognizable forms on the picture plane. The construction of and overlaying of helixes, ellipses, chevrons, stylized lightning-bolts, and a range of morphic shapes - from the loosely configured to the geometrically precise - give to his paintings the effect of a careening, but controlled, chaos.

Mains had his second one-man show at Houston's Graham Gallery in 1981. In September of the same year he moved to California. The paintings done through 1985 intuitively developed along Mains' "constructivist" tendencies; this period is represented by catalogue #'s 1-11 in this exhibition. In the painting from 1982-83 (catalogue #8), executed predominantly in blues and reds, a flux of linked rhombuses, intestinal/cloud forms, pointed plain and intricate ellipses, and other objects too numerous and diverse to classify appear to converge on a central circular form composed of writhing rose and turquoise strands. Within it, two V-shaped wedges hover in opposition, while between them a "cluster of energy" rotates against a distant dark and menacing void. Mains generates all his forms directly upon the canvas - there is no preliminary sketching apart from what appears on the picture plane.

The effect of the painting from this period, in my view, is dislocating. The images are simply visually aggressive, chaotic "moments" with occasional, lesser areas of apparent control. As some forms blur in their trajectory, others seem held in stop-motion. In catalogue #8 the eye searches the surface for a place of refuge from the flux, and is drawn horribly, inexorably, to the roiling, smoky void at the upper right. Indeed, one is never sure where one "is" in these motion-filled "moments". And after the fascination born of uncertainty recedes, there is the realization that one doesn't want to be "there". But once the viewer tries to remove his attention from one of Mains' "moments," it is no mere matter of turning one's back. The "moment" persists; it continues to haunt the memory after the encounter.

One of Mains' goals as a painter is to bring the viewer to the very edge of visual ambiguity: each painting has numerous points at which the viewer feels that he is almost able to recognize something tangibly meaningful - but not quite. His best work manifests that ambiguous edge as a balance between chaos and control. The state of flux that Mains achieves by working directly on the canvas out of his inner promptings is the essence of his "constructivist" method. His careening clusters of forms, the shapes arrested in space, the disquieting psychological associations - all have parallels in the structure of the music of the 20th century avant-garde French composer, Edgar Varese, whom Mains admires.

1985 is the year that Mains speaks of as a "coming to consciousness" in his paintings. From this juncture his work reveals a will to move deliberate compositions; the chaos seems more under control. Moreover, while Mains admits that chaos in his early work has allusions to death, it is with catalogue #12 (fig. 2) that he says death becomes a dominant theme. So, apparently, does the yearning for death's defeat in transcendence, as evidenced by the inclusion of a distant, but powerful, light beyond the chaos of darkness.

More so than his earlier works, catalogue #12 concentrates the dusky chaotic forms in a vortex that ominously churns jagged double-helixes; stars with sword and dagger points; and a red vegetable mass. But these threatening forms seem to break up with the emerging presence of a glowing light at the center of the painting. While Mains does not identify himself as a Christian, one nevertheless cannot help but be reminded of the prologue in St. John's Gospel which speaks of "a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower" (1:5, Jerusalem Bible). Furthermore, catalogue #12 uncannily recalls Mathias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece of 1515, in which the far right panel depicts a luminous Christ resurrected within a glowing aureole against a black sky. Even the jagged forms of the outer vortex of catalogue #12 have their parallels in Grunewald's paintings: jutting points and protuberances of the armor and weapons of the soldiers; and their spayed, fallen forms in the darkness around Christ's tomb.

From the glowing vortex of catalogue #12, circular forms and concentrations of light become dominant elements in Mains' paintings in 1986 and 1987 (catalogues #s 13-18). In catalogue #13 the image is an inversion of catalogue #12 - moving from outside in, from light to dark. Catalogue #14, on the other hand seems to represent a section of a great, rotating wheel. Given Mains' interest in Buddhist philosophy, the viewer is tempted to make associations with the "wheel of life." But the ongoing presence of the chaotic element may also suggest a wheel of destruction.

Catalogue #17 (fig. 3) from 1987 introduces a diagonal composition; this marks Mains' direction towards greater intentionality, an enhancement of the "control" element. Moreover, an elongated vertical format is used for the first time, lending a sense of ascendancy to the painting. Here, too, the light becomes more dominant, suggesting a stronger focus on the transcendent realm. In addition, the cluster of chaotic forms is more scattered - and thereby less threatening, giving the sensation of "swimming" over and around final obstacles to the longed-for region of gentle, peaceful, blue light.

Catalogue #18, also from 1987, continues in the ascendant, vertical format and shows Mains making another important step towards deliberate composition. The image is symmetrically constructed of nearly identical, multiple knife-like forms that incidentally suggest the overlapping feathers of a bird's wing. These appear to draw apart before the luminescent, transcendent realm. Also important is the introduction of a recognizable ankh, the ancient symbol of life, and in this instance perhaps a signifier of hope.

Mains moves further in deliberate composition with the paintings of catalogue #s 19 and 20. In the former (fig, 1) he tightens the symmetrical composition developed in catalogue # 18, and introduces a monumental human figure. And what a figure! A stylized, headless and decaying corpse is pathetically trussed by the wrists, its hands distorted into writhing, globular tendrils. Arrows pierce the rib-cage of the figure, evoking the third century Christian martyr, St Sebastian. Stretched and knotted ropes extend from left and right to bind the thighs, while a monstrous metal clamping device deforms the lower legs. But Mains does not morbidly leave the figure in its ravaged state. The transcendent in suffering is imaged by the large scarlet crown of thorns - emblematic of Christ's endurance during His Passion - which frames the figure and seems to hold the outer cluster of deathly, dark chaotic forms at bay. The transcendent in death is imaged in golden light - never more radiant than in this work - which bathes the pitiful figure with redemptive illumination from behind, and also appears to generate the splendid wings that will carry the figure transformed into the Divine Light.

The potential existing in the catalogue #19 work is further developed by Mains in catalogue #20, a painting from 1989. Three trussed, suspended figures are menaced from below by an apparatus of whirling blades. At top, a beautifully rendered, haloed cherub draws the figures upward - again, the ascendant format - towards the source of light. Around a double helix are clusters of forms that have persisted in Mains' work since the early 1980's.

A man of genuine humility who respects his viewers by not presenting them with a "finished product" (he expects us to do our own interpretive work), Mains is reticent to speak of other areas of exploration for future paintings. He knows that the quest for self-knowledge will continue to shape his identity, and who he will become cannot be foreknown. The continual learning of his identity comes in living purposefully moment by moment, and by a subsequent contemplation of those moments.

In this essay I have attempted to interpret certain facets that strike me as significant to Brian Mains' work of the past ten years. The contemplative viewer of this exhibition will certainly apprehend variables on, and additions to, my own. I also hope that he/she will find inwoven in these paintings something deeper and more exciting - mystery. In Mains' images, mystery is signified by the capacity of his expressive forms to mean much more than they say. By searching for his own identity within the juxtapositions of potent forms - from his subconscious, from Buddhism and Christianity, Mains gives the viewer an opportunity to discover new ways of experiencing his/her identity in the world.

- Gordon Fuglie