Rebecca Brienen

Co-Author and Editor of "Sun Patterns, Dark Canyon: The Paintings and Aquatints of Doel Reed (1894-1985)"

January 10, 2022

Rebecca Parker Brienen is the Vaughn Vennerberg II Chair in Art and Professor of Art History at Oklahoma State University, where she also serves as the Associate Dean for Personnel and Faculty Development in the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Brienen earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University. Her primary areas of research and curatorial practice include seventeenth-century Dutch art, the history of museums and collecting, and more recently twentieth-century American art, in particular the prints and paintings of Doel Reed.

This publication explores the art and career of the highly successful 20th century American printmaker and painter Doel Reed. Reed is best known today as a Southwestern artist and "master of the aquatint;” his conservative yet modernist approach to the New Mexican landscape found a ready audience among curators and collectors during his lifetime. Reed began summering in the Taos artists’ colony starting in the 1940s and permanently moved to New Mexico in 1959. The rich and varied American landscapes of the Midwest and the mountainous topography and geology of the Southwest were his primary sources of inspiration. Included in the illustrations are over sixty works of art by Doel Reed and his contemporaries. Reed was an acknowledged leader in the United States with respect to the technique of aquatint, which reflects his close study of Goya’s masterful graphic work. By focusing on Reed, we also gain insight into the vibrant community of artists throughout the American Southwest and Midwest in the 1930s-1970s and how they responded to and adapted modernist approaches for their own purposes and audiences. His close friends and students included artists as diverse as Birger Sandzén, Ernst Blumenschein, William (Bill) Dickerson, J. Jay McVicker, and Howard Cook, among many others.

URL: https://library-dep.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2022-honorees/rebecca-brienen

Last Updated: 17 January 2022