Phyllis Bramson: An Interview

Phyllis Bramson (b.1941) is a Chicago painter whose post-imagist style emphasizes content and the deeply personal. Bramson’s paintings are private scenarios that include figures (or performers) who carry out highly charged activities with strong psychological meaning. They perform in highly theatrical, Oriental settings of almost cubist space and acid greens, yellows, and reds.

In this interview, Bramson discusses the development of her art and her influences--from a job as window designer for Marshall Field's store in Chicago, to an interest in drama and reading philisophical and psychological texts. The combination of these influences provided a fluid base from which Bramson explored image-making, the characterization of figures such as the 'trickster', and images and counter-images of the otherness of the 'self'.

Bramson lives and works in Chicago.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1984, edited in 2009 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.