Brian Sweetland
Brian Sweetland's oil paintings of rural Vermont are rendered with a gentle hand. His paintings have the sense of immediacy of the Impressionist tradition and there is an underlying compositional architecture that is careful and deliberate and enduring.
Sweetland's subjects are the threatened landscape, that which is bound to disappear, and he is adept at capturing both its substance and its essence. Pastoral Vermont is depicted lovingly, but not sentimentally; rusted farm equipment hulks under the cover of snow; Holsteins squelch in the muddy yard. He paints out- of - doors year round, always in the company of his beloved dogs.
Brian Sweetland was born in Wheaton, MN in 1952 and was raised in Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Ohio. After graduating from Ohio University in world history, he moved to Washington, DC, where he independently developed his childhood interest in art and started oil painting.
In 1977, his sketches caught the attention of Dean Faussett, a prominent landscape and mural painter, and Sweetland was invited to move to Vermont to continue his studies. A grant from the Society for the Preservation of Traditional Values in the Fine Arts helped Sweetland begin his apprenticeship. His first major exhibit was held in 1980 and since then he has shown at many galleries in Vermont, New York, Alabama and Massachusetts.
Sweetland continues to live in Vermont. His work is found in many private and public collections around the world.