Piece description from the artist
This large-scale work marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of the artist’s practice. An Abundance of Epiphenomenal Qualia is both the title of the painting and the name of the series it launched—an extended exploration into maximalism, layered abstraction, and visual overload. The composition spills over with color, texture, and symbol: drips, cartoonish eyes, geometric glyphs, and frantic scrawls collide in a dense visual field that resists easy parsing.
At the heart of the painting is an investigation into consciousness and perception—“epiphenomenal qualia” being a philosophical term for subjective experience that emerges from, but does not influence, physical processes. In this work, those intangible inner states are externalized as overwhelming sensory information. The piece was originally on long-term loan and has just recently returned to the studio, prompting a new round of reflection and appreciation for its role as a foundational piece in a larger body of work.
Blake Brasher is a visual artist working primarily in mixed media painting. His colorful abstractions are reflections on the nature of reality and what it is like to be a thinking being in a universe that is at once beautiful and terrifying. He grew up in Alaska, and has also lived in Turkey, Texas, and Arizona before moving to Massachusetts in 1997. He received his BS in Art and Design from MIT in 2003 and his MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge MA in 2022. He has been exhibiting his work publicly since 2008. His work is internationally collected, and he has participated in artist residency programs in Italy, Romania, France, New York, and Massachusetts. He currently lives in Harvard, MA with his fiancée and their two little boys and maintains a studio in beautiful downtown Lowell, MA.
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