EXHIBITIONS ARE SCENES OF WHIMSY

BY WILLIAM H. BRAUN  BURLINGTON FREE PRESS SEPT. 28TH, 1983

"....  Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr.'s paintings at the McCarthey Arts Center... are mostly lonely, sometimes spookily humorous, and always luminescent....  Brunelle's 'Hopper-esque' realism and modulated hues suggest the paintings were laboriously drafted by a chuckling artist whose moves have the dogged deliberation of an accountant's calculations.       

    He calls his style 'Edward Hopper meets Dracula...', an over statement on the second claim.  The inherent humor of his works allows them to be mildly disquieting without being frightening.  They are more like 'Arsnic and Old Lace...'

    Three small, youthful figures standing in a pool of yellow, thrown by a street light are the subject of "Decent Children Should Be In bed By Now".  A shadowy portion of a car, with a house in the dark background, gains its fear-evoking quality primarily from the title "That Red Car Is Out There Again Tonight".  An eerily lighted bridge with not a figure in sight is the subject of "Someone Drowns There Every Year"

    The frightful humor is really just a bonus.  Brunelle's overriding interests are the geometry of his buildings and vehicles, and the burning lightness he creates in the centers of dark, but rich fields of color.  He is especially adept at the latter."

NORTH BY NORTHEAST MAGAZINE OCT. 1989

"..Joan Curtis uses The Farm to organize personally significant family history, as Robert Brunelle records family legends relating to Baxter Street, Rutland.      Urban or rural, these fragments relate the well worn contours of often told stories, not so much literally remembered as reinforced by ritual repetition.  Both works use style and materials to elicit a romanticized past; antique flower sprigged backgrounds for Curtis, which may be wallpaper or the fabric of Grandmother's dress, circus poster colors and captions for Brunelle, which endorse the affectionate amusement with which we view ancestors known only through anecdote..."

HAYS GALLERY FEATURES BRUNELLE

BRATTLEBORO REFORMER 7/3/97

"...Brunelle grew up in a house not unlike those in his artwork.  Brunelle takes notice that today's slums were formerly stately homes...'Now they sit, weighted down with a century of patches and bad repairs, the sidewalks cemented right up the foundations.  The grand floor plans have been subdivided into tiny apartments, which are crammed with loud, angry people, desperately trying to make ends meet in a world that is doing its best to ignore them'   In these parts of towns, common to all New England, he finds stories to tell..."

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS

A CONTEMPORARY ARTIST WITH LONG AGO DREAMS

VOX  6/19/96

"....Luminous, atmospheric colors dominate the landscape.  Smoke night skies hang over sharp, angled architecture and quirky citizens. Welcome to the painted world of Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr.

"...Brunelle's figures are realistic, but with a strong tendency for caricature.  While he favors an element of subtle, almost perverse humor, the picture is always ordered in a very specific way..."

"...Not a big fan of simple nature scenes, what he terms 'flatlander art', Brunelle tries to serve as its antidote.  His characters fall into a category he describes as 'The American Peasant', making an analogy to the Middle Ages, when different classes wore clothing to distinguish one from another. 'Americans like to think of themselves as not being class oriented, but it's no different', Brunelle says, ' The modern equivalent of a peasant's costume would be denim and baseball hat...'"

IN THE SWIM   SEVEN DAYS  2/11/04

"...Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr. seems to have a some somewhere in the area every month.  Fortunately, he's not the kind of painter who relies on just one theme.  Brunelle's exhibit 'Swim Goggles', at Sneakers in Winooski includes a pool scene, groups of figures and building facades, such as the one portrayed in 'Alley Way', pictured here.  His work might best be described as 21st century genre painting...

MR. BRUNELLE EXPLAINS IT ALL CARTOONS!

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