Meet this year’s Juror - Troy Brooks

My first drawings were sketches of the women I saw in black and white movies when I was two years old. My mother used to paint still life watercolors in the afternoon. Sometimes I could evade nap time if I sat quietly, drawing beside her easel. She usually had an old movie playing while she worked. I was captivated by the women in those films and that’s all I wanted to draw. As I got older, I discovered classic Hollywood studio photographers like George Hurrell and spent hours in the library drawing from giant books of Hollywood stills. I sketched images from the silent era through to the 50’s. I became fixated on the caustic way atmosphere was used as part of the story telling. This was my only training in the visual arts. Eventually, by the time I started creating my own scenes and characters, that vintage cinematic style was baked into my technique. By learning on my own, a distinct style surfaced through my ignorance of more traditional approaches. In all my years of visiting galleries, I’d never seen anything remotely similar to the particular hybrid of genres that made up my work. I assumed it would never be taken seriously in the world of fine art. So I looked for work in illustration. Then one day, while visiting a friend’s loft in Toronto, I saw a large print on the wall by a pop surrealism artist. That was when I discovered there was a contemporary art movement that I unknowingly belonged to, although it hadn’t reached Canada. I soon managed to get my first proper gallery show in 2009, and then my first large scale solo exhibition VIRAGO in 2010. After the surprising success of that show I was able to focus completely on my work. Since then my paintings have been shown in galleries and museums around the world.