Exchanging Cosmic Breath (seasonal mostly winter)

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AAM’s own collection documentation on the artwork Fickle Ways (acquired in 2017) states, “Phyllis Bramson, who is noted for her use of patterning and lush decoration, describes her work as ‘infused with lighthearted arbitrariness and amusing anecdotes about love and affection, in an often cold and hostile world.’” Bramson creates compositions that are informed by sources as diverse as French Rococo art, Chinese paintings of pleasure gardens and Surrealism. Encounters between the sexes, offering ambiguous, deliberately incomplete narratives, are a recurring theme for the artist.” This description also applies aptly to the artwork offered for donation here. Exchanging Cosmic Breath (seasonal mostly winter) features a man and woman exhaling presumably cold air to see each other’s breaths, surrounded by collaged vignettes of winter scenes. Through reading the title and looking at the two figures breathing into each other, Bramson has recontextualized the often mundane activity of breathing in the winter in a more fantastical context of exchanging breath between two people, or cosmic entities. AAM’s audience, both online and in-person, show a frequent appetite for depictions of winter, making this work a likely fan-favorite in the future.