Brennan Chadwick Emerson (born April 28, 1979 in Redmond, Washington) is an American/Canadian author, philosopher and painter.

Early Life

Raised in Everett and Marysville, Washington, Emerson began writing and painting in his mid teens. As a young child he was effected by the death of his younger brother. He would later say that this event, "released [his] natural proclivity to think" at a much earlier age than it would have otherwise been. He was raised in the Worldwide Church of God until forgoing formal religion for a unique natural agnosticism in his teens.

Adult Life

Emerson moved to Phoenix at the age of twenty. While there he worked as a graphic artist, wrote and painted. He drove across the country, abandoning a broken car in the far corner of Maine and wound up in the army as an intelligence agent. He published the first three of his books while serving in Korea. Among his paintings from Korea were the chaotic January: the Imjin River and the dreary Storm.
In 2003 he made a "philosophical" decision to quit the army and spent two and a half months in military prison in Korea. Upon returning to the States, he spent the following years traveling and hiking, including an aborted attempt to disappear for a year in the British Columbia forest, forty days spent walking around the Hawaiian Islands and at least two near death experiences.

In 2006 Emerson worked on Maya Lin's Systematic Landscapes exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Written Works

Emerson's early works are rough and idealistic. His first novel, Epitaphs of a Broken Society, constructs a figurative tale in which love, death and war all play parts, though the underlying theme seems that freedom and love, though great, can be overwhelmed by the world. This theme, which retains a touch of the autobiographical, remains in both Autobiography of a Dream, a collection of short stories, and A Brief Existence, which is written in a unique journal entry format and covers every day of a nineteen year life in the Vietnam era. Autobiography of a Dream includes a handful of fantastic works, including a chillingly simplistic tale of the animal kingdom revolting against mankind and a mind-bending odyssey into the mind of a man who finds himself in a world in which time has stopped for everyone but him. These stories are very surrealistic in nature. More recently appear The Reeducation of Myself and King Marcine, which Emerson made no attempt to publish. The Reeducation of Myself is in part autobiographical but also quite philosophical and includes a thought provoking chapter on structure of God written when the author was working on a fishing boat in Alaska. King Marcine is a collection of short stories and poems which shows the beginning of an evolution in the author. It includes multiple dream-like stories, allegories and historical fictions, as well as two intriguing philosophical dialogues.

Paintings

Emerson's painting style is characterized by the impressionist like capturing of a mood. The sky of January: The Imjin River is a highly abstract realization of a cloudy sky he witnessed at the border of North and South Korea while on guard duty. He described the scene as "surreal" and the painting captures this feeling.

Storm likewise captures a feeling, this of isolation and gloom. The painting is two thirds black, separated in the middle by a stark gray and white cloudy sky and silhouetted black trees which seem to shiver in the cold. In the foreground, half hidden in the blackness of the ground, sits a curled up, androgynous, child. Sadness or alienation breathes from the child's eyes. It is a cold painting, but drooping between the child's knees, from his or her unseen hand is a single pink flower, representative, perhaps of the child's innocence.

Salvation was painted in 2004. It depicted a battlefield, in which some two dozen soldiers were highly detailed. On a hill behind the field a classical pillared white building stood shining in the sun. The entire battle field was tinted red and crafted with deep shadows and expresionist style faces. The central figure looked upward. His face are golden. A sword falls from his hand. Three arrows pierced his chest and a spear is being thrust into his side by a faceless enemy. At the far left of the painting a child sat. His face was also golden and almost identical to the central warrior. The shown at two brief exhibitions. It was afterwards burned by the artist in an apparent fit of madness.

Philosophy

Emerson's philosophy is characterized by a sense of hope in the potential of self and mankind. His words reveal a veiled frustration with the world as it is as opposed to what it might be. His works are idealistic. He praises innocence, love and equality. The following quote from "A Second Conversation" in King Marcine seems to give a sense of what he believes.

A man must have hope. He must be able at least to dream of a future when he is wise; when he has found the light; just as a man must be able to dream of a community on this earth in which men are truly equal, free and happy. That I might be wise is a dream. That the entire world be wise is a far greater dream.

Excerpt from "Antarctic Dream"

This is the final paragraph of the last story in King Marcine.

When the light again returned, it was faint and hovered about an empty place. The lake was nearly empty, and the water which remained was stagnant and polluted with carcasses, metal, stone and plastic. Ruins of oil derricks and industrial buildings covered the landscape. There was silence. The light waned, and with a loud crash the roof of the great cavern collapsed. Everything was rubble; a mix of decay and unchanging filth. Then a single sprout began to grow. Soon it was a young tree laden with fruit which fell and grew into new trees, which grew new fruit; and so life spread until it engulfed the decay. Grass grew beneath the trees. Birds began to sing, silently, hidden at first, but then they began to fly from tree to tree, dancing on a gentle breeze. Other animals began to run amongst the trees; rabbits, deer, lions; all were happy again. Then a bear was seen sitting, watching the sun halt in its course, just so the light was perfect and the world was warm, just as the cavern had always been. Then the bear vanished and in his place stood the shining figure of an angel brandishing in his hand a flaming sword. And behind him the animals danced with joy and shouts of grace, but among them was not one human being.

Links

Brennan Chadwick Emerson

A Brief Existence at Buy.com

King Marcine at lulu.com

Books

Emerson, Brennan (2005). King Marcine

Emerson, Brennan (2000). Epitaphs of a Broken Society, 1st edition. ISBN 0595141137.

Emerson, Brennan (2003). A Brief Existence. ISBN 0595299164.

Emerson, Brennan (2003). Autobiography of a Dream, 1st edition. ISBN 0595289886.

Emerson, Brennan (2002). Windfall. ISBN 059527563X.

Sources

Bowker's Books in Print (2006).

Emerson, Brennan (2005). The Reeducation of Myself.

Krane, J. (2005). Interviews with Brennan Chadwick Emerson.