By Adam Blanchard
Not all artists know what path they wanted to take since childhood, even if their influences have always been present.
While growing up in Bloomingdale, Junior at SUNY Plattsburgh Brayden Munn’s uncle was a cartoonist, featured in the New Yorker magazine. His grandfather would leave a lasting impact on Munn.
“He was actually a helicopter paramedic,” Munn said. “But he was a super talented artist. He was a musician, too.”
Seemingly following in his grandfather’s footsteps, Munn would also learn to play multiple instruments prior to discovering his love for art. Having taught himself to play the drums and taking piano lessons for over 10 years, Munn began to love the arts.
He explored other media, finding a passion in portraits, specifically caricatures. Having experimented with many different materials like graphite, charcoal and acrylic paint, Munn would find oil paint to be the most pleasing to use.
“I used to do grotesque, cartoon sort of portraits,” Munn said. “And now it’s transitioned to where I’m doing realism portraits.”
In addition to being musically inclined and artistically trained, Munn let his creative mind run wild and had created a language system inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”
Munn had not always thought about pursuing art as a career, but only decided after Susan Hoffer, an adjunct professor at North Country Community College, recommended him to come to SUNY Plattsburgh.
“I started at North Country actually, and I was studying to be a teacher, not even art,” Munn said. “And even before that, I was trying to be a music major.”
Now having studied art for over a year collegiately, Munn has refined his craft developing a unique approach to painting that saves him time.
“I’ll set up a scene or I’ll find a scene, but usually I’ll set things up so that I can be intentional,” Munn said. “I’ll take a good photo with a digital camera, and then I like to project the photo onto my canvas. I could draw it on there, sort of traditionally. I could use a grid method, I could go free hand, but I found, sort of through trial and error, there’s really no shame in using the projector.”
Munn avoids doing sketches as well, preferring to go straight into the painting process. Munn’s choice of medium leaves room for mistakes to be fixed as he paints.
“Because of the way that I work, I have a lot of room to make mistakes and the oil paint is pretty forgiving,” Munn said. “And at the end of the day, I’m still gonna learn from it.”
Much of Munn’s inspiration is drawn from the old masters of art. He is deliberate in his art style, making his works reminiscent of older pieces. John Singer Sargent is his favorite artist.
Munn is working on a series focusing on people and their most valued possessions. He uses diptychs, a style of painting that uses two canvases, in order to draw attention to the two subjects. Munn submitted one of the pieces to the Best of SUNY Art Exhibition in Albany in hopes of having it displayed and recognized.
“The separation is what is supposed to drive the message home,” Munn said.
In the future, Munn aims to be a gallery artist, but he is not averse to becoming a teacher in the future.
“I’ve got lots of family that are teachers, so I’m not opposed to teaching, that’s what I was originally planning to do,” Munn said.
Having discovered his love for art so recently, Munn said that he encourages others to reach for their dreams. He hopes that others welcome the gift of art into their lives and get the most out of it.
“I think anybody could be a creative,” Munn said. “They just have to entertain whether they want art in their life or not.”
