“I always have a concrete idea, or a concept, or a story.”
(Toshio Hosokawa, composer)
I make art for myself—for my own survival.
I also want it to be an offering for you, the same way Toshio Hosokawa’s Landscape II became an offering for me.
I first heard the piece when I was in residence at Yellow Barn Music Festival in 2017. I was immediately struck by how its taut energy mirrored my daughter Elisif’s emotional journey over the last years of her life: her walk between serenity and chaos; between holding it together and not.
It inspired Hello, Is This Peter? (shown above, and on view in Grace).
I don’t want my art to be only about me. I want something of my art’s story to pass on to you, to resonate for you as Landscape II did for me, connecting us in shared humanity.
Landscape II became a gift to me only once I heard it, which is exactly why I have built my new Bruun Studios website: to offer my art in the same way.
On the site you can find two stories: Our Infinite Selves and A Communal Offering. In them I explore my inward and outward phases as an artist, my balancing between self and community. Together, the pieces convey a central paradox of being an artist: making art for myself as a necessary prerequisite to creating something for you.
I have no doubt Hosokawa composed Landscape II for his own reasons; once I heard it, I felt it had been made for me.
In the same way, my art is for me, and for you.
—Peter