I recently watched David Lynch’s 1986 classic Blue Velvet for the first time. For some reason, a particular scene stuck out to me, in which we’re first introduced to the character Sandy. She is standing outside her suburban front yard at night, cloaked in the shadows of the bushes. Suddenly, out of total darkness, she steps into frame. It’s a dramatic entrance. There’s something about neighborhoods at night that fill me with an odd combination of feelings. A street lit only by streetlights is a setting for so many different things: peacefully sleeping individuals, fear of the dark, mysterious noises… When I see Brendan Day’s series Autumn / Winter, I think about all of these things, all at once.

Brendan Day
*View from the Red Line, November*
Oil on Canvas
12" x 9"

Brendan Day paints Indianapolis neighborhoods, often with surprising color palettes. In the soft light of College Avenue Corner, South Broad Ripple, the sky is a textured blend of pink and lavender. Day’s painting style is notably abstract, and the funny thing about abstraction is that sometimes, it can make a piece feel even more “real” than a photorealistic approach. Maybe this is because our eyes often deceive us; we look at the world around us with less-than-perfect clarity, through smudged glasses and rain covered windshields.

Brendan Day
*College Avenue Corner, South Broad Ripple*
Oil on Canvas
36" x 24"

Paintings afford us a different way of seeing the world. Brendan Day knows this, as he depicts urban spaces not as they are, but how we may recall them in the fog of our own memory– like in the green light and violet sky of Late December Evening’s. The work bears the distant beauty of a long-forgotten childhood friend’s home.

Brendan Day
*Late December Evening*
Oil on Canvas
20" x 20"

When Day isn’t painting homes, he walks you into the nearby woods, where trees are toppled, and the world bends around you, like in the piece Fort Ben in October. Here is a painting that has autumn’s classic palette, with its amber tones and the soft blue sky visible through the elongated bodies of the trees. Day’s trees certainly “feel” like trees–they’re gnarled, thin, jagged and in the way that trees are when you’re fighting through a thicket–and I’m reminded of childhood escapades through the woods.

Brendan Day
*Fort Ben in October*
Oil on Canvas
27" x 20"

Regardless of the memories these pieces stir, Brendan Day has made a show that is itself memorable. The settings of Day’s work are specific to Indianapolis, but their effect is broader– a sort of general nostalgia– a wistfulness for the places we’ve visited and maybe soon forgotten.

Brendan Day
*December Dusk on 48th*
Oil on Canvas
36" x 24"

Autumn / Winter is currently on display in City Gallery. See more of this show on our online gallery.