by ELLEN HOWARDS
Arts Media (Boston), April 2004
Mark Gallery, Cambridge, MA
An entirely different world is inhabited by Prilla Smith Brackett, whose work is showing along with
Rubens’. Brackett’s series revolves around one beloved summer house in Duxbury built in 1906, in
the woods and on the water. There are two acrylic and oil paintings on canvas, and several medium-
sized monoprints which depict views in or from the house. Two monoprints of a sleeping porch are
most successful; the use of monoprint softens them and recall a northern porched-in cabin nearly
anywhere. The geometric balances well with the gestural; other images may have been better
served by another medium. And while the background swirling of trees and water are naturalistic in
the two larger paintings, with loose and gestural brushstrokes, they contrast to the rather cool,
architectural rendering of the house, and all its many window-pane rectangles. In a few of the
pieces, the perspective appears to be off, as if doing so much geometry were forcing the artist’s true
calling and abilities. The series departs from her usual work, more accomplished landscapes and deep
wooded scenes with curvilinear trees which seem to entwine and animate the forest; in contrast
these are more contained, cooler, like a snapshot in time from a sketchbook of memories to preserve
but to no longer inhibit.
©Ellen Howards 2004