Photography by Christiaan Blok Brennan is shown here in her home studio, where she conceives her unique works of art.

Constance Brennan Pays Homage to Saints and Angels in Textural Works of Art

Constance Brennan’s parents purchased her first set of oil paints when she was 8, and she has been engrossed in one sort of artistic endeavor or another ever since.

“I’ve just dabbled in all kinds of stuff,” the Phoenix artist says, pointing out pastel works and paintings on her home’s walls, beaded wall hangings, artistically wrought dolls here and there, and more.

Her “dabbling”—and a passion for art history—came together about two years ago in an endeavor that has surprised even her. Brennan creates mixed-media works of art in a style she refers to as a “cousin to traditional iconic painting.” Her feminine figures, including representations of the Madonna, saints and angels, are painted on wood and at times generously embellished with leather, metal and jewels. Highly textural and mood-evoking, the paintings seem to have the timeworn patina of centuries past.
 
 

Photo courtesy of Constance Brennan Inspired by icons from ninth-century Venice, artist Constance Brennan’s Bejeweled Byzantine Madonna, an acrylic mixed media on wood, measures 48" x 24" unframed.

The tools of Brennan’s trade crowd a cozy bedroom-turned-studio in the home she shares with husband Joe: Included in this visual kaleidoscope are acrylic paints, sheet metal, modeling paste and pieces of old jewelry. She hunts for the latter at estate sales, antiques shops and garage sales, and takes them apart, separating rhinestones, pearls, antique chains and even rosary beads for future use on her saintly subjects. Art history books and books about angels and saints—her reference materials—sit nearby in stacks. And awaiting her creativity on a tall easel this day is her canvas. “It is made of plywood that I get from Home Depot,” a smiling Brennan volunteers.

The work of turning plywood into vintage-looking art starts before she ever begins to paint. “I distress the wood and age it. I beat on it with a hammer and scratch it,” states the artist. This, in combination with paints, jewels and her assortment of items, lends the layered works a venerable quality, some observe. “People say my icon-style paintings look like they have been taken out of a church,” states Brennan. But despite such reactions to her imagery, she has no wish to re-create what ecclesiastic artists were doing centuries ago.

“I’m not trying to be an iconic painter at all,” she gently insists. “I take an idea from a picture I see in a book and put my own spin on it. I don’t copy.” The icon painters of old “were directed by the Church. They were told on what side a figure should be standing, how it should be facing, and what colors to use. I don’t follow any rules.” She has at times painted Mary and the infant Jesus with blond hair and blue eyes. “In the old icons, they always had dark hair and eyes and were dark-complected.” She also does not stylize the figures’ noses and eyes as much as the historic icon painters did. “I don’t find that appealing,” she notes.