MARK BRENNAN - full fathom five
MARK BRENNAN
full fathom five
Farm Projects and the Wellfleet Conservation Trust are pleased to present FullFathomFive, a solo exhibition of new work by Mark Brennan. On view from August 29 through September 08, the show features a series of meticulously rendered seascapes painted directly onto weathered driftwood gathered from the shores of Outer Cape Cod, an area deemed the “graveyard of the Atlantic” because of its history of shipwrecks. Presented in partnership with the Wellfleet Conservation Trust, the exhibition extends out of the gallery and onto the Herring River Overlook Trail, a mile long loop that alternates pine and oak forest with bearberry heath and overlooks the Herring River estuary and Cape Cod Bay.
Embedded into the actual landscape, the exhibit offers a unique opportunity to experience the work both indoors and in nature. Referencing Shakespeare’s The Tempest and its imagery of transformation through sea and time, FullFathomFive explores the intersection of the material and the immaterial, the mortal and the eternal. Brennan’s paintings depict the Atlantic not as postcard or panorama, but as something closer to myth — vast, ancient, and unknowable. Each fragment of driftwood serves not merely as surface but as an active participant in the work, bearing physical traces of decay, resilience, and passage.
Originally conceived as an outdoor project, the series continues Brennan’s interest in placing the viewer inside a dialogue between object and illusion, landscape and artifact. While his earlier “Space in a Box” works turned oceans into intimate dioramas, here the sea is embedded in rough, timeworn timber, no longer enclosed, but breaking into the world.
Brennan paints without photo references, instead building each image from memory, observation, and imagination. His process is exacting and meditative: multiple coats of gesso mute the texture of the wood grain; exaggerated perspectives create the illusion of depth; high-gloss varnish contrasts starkly with the porous substrate. The results are haunting and luminous, evoking both the decorative tradition of coastal folk art and the spiritual inquiries of the Hudson River School.
