Janet Gwendolyn Smith Art

Angus Brecheen (1996) Florida

Angus Brecheen was born in 1996 to a family of five generations of artists and inventors from New York and Florida. He is a life long resident of Lake County, Florida. From a very young age, he demonstrated an interest in the arts. His father, Glen Brecheen and mother, Eva Marie (Van Anden) Brecheen were artists, whose tartan glass art work grace the homes of several Scottish nobility around the globe. Four siblings shared in his artist development. All are gifted artists.

Brecheen was challenged at birth with Down syndrome, but thrived with the love of his family. His mother was a weaver and a multi media artist, who created registered tartan plaids for Florida police and fire departments.

The five generations of artists and inventors include: William and Ursula Van Anden (grandparents), known for their oil paintings and wood carvings; Frank Van Anden (great-grandfather), artist and inventor, who held patents on the aileron, the wind tunnel, and flew at the same time as the Wright brothers; and William Van Anden (great-great-grandfather) artist and inventor of the first free-wheeling velocipede. The family worked to bring beauty and progress out of the materials around them, regardless of the country’s economic state, the political climate, or their own personal limitations.

From the day of Brecheen’s birth, the doctors were not very encouraging about his prognosis. His parents were determined to give him a socially engaging and artistic enriching life. Despite difficulties with speech, vision, attention span, and dysgraphia, Brecheen has forged ahead to develop talents in both tactile arts and performing arts. His parents’ commitment is evident both in his warm social personality, love of nature, deeply relational personality and multi-layered artistic abilities. He is rarely seen without some form of tactile art medium in pocket or hand. He works daily in various artistic projects and uses many mediums to express himself. Encouraged by his family and friends he spends hours quietly creating his artist vision.

Brecheen practiced drawing and studied painting with: his parents and siblings; James Sextro (2017 winner of the Florida Arts History Award), commercial and graphic artist; Jason Brown, artist and filmmaker; Luke Sosinavage (SOS), highly stylized graffiti artist; and Bob Ross, legendary PBS painter. January 2015, Brecheen collaborated with international artist, Wayne Sealy in Winter Garden, Florida working in pen and ink developing caricatures and inventing new superheroes. He continues to study the works of the great masters; Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, Titian, and El Greco. He visits the local art museums and small community art galleries never missing an opening or a new exhibition.

Brecheen has traveled from the Artic circle to the Florida Keys. He journeyed via Jeep to Alaska, the great American west, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, North Carolina, Washington DC and the Atlantic coastal states with family and friends throughout the USA. His love of people, nature, storytelling, performing arts, movies and wildlife has enhanced his creative vision. His annual travels to the Highland Games on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina, since birth provided him the perfect environment to play his didgeridoo and capture the landscape there. Travel provided inspiration adding variety to his paintings and drawings. August 2016 Brecheen created art while visiting Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, USA with the museums interactive digital art resources. He visited the White House in 2017. The Secret Service made him a special agent and allowed him to pose with the oil portrait of President William Clinton by Simmie Knox. He was very proud to have the honor. He was amazed at the great art throughout the White House.

Drawing and painting subjects range from super heroes, space warriors, landscapes, ocean scenes, enchanted castles, movie and music icons, wildlife and portraits. Working primarily with acrylic, colored chalk, colored pens, pen, ink and pencil he fills the canvas with vibrant, often cubistic forms. Every painting Brecheen produces is hung in private display for further self-study until it is ready for a sale opportunity or an art show. When he is not painting, he draws in pencil and pen continuing to hone his fine motor skills. These daily studies are developed and expanded onto canvas with acrylic pigments.

Brecheen challenges himself everyday with new ideas, sketches, designs and color. His palette is filled with vibrant colors including fluorescents, metallic and glow-in-the dark pigments. He is not restricted by convention in his pigment choices and his imagination brings the viewer a new world to explore.

The majority of his art is held in private collections. He plans to sell enough of his art to purchase his very own “castle,” in Lake County, Florida.

Submitted by Janet G. Smith, Art Consultant and Art Historian
© 2017 E.B. Baumann

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