Untitled, 1978Starting in about the mid-1980’s and continuing for the rest of his creative life, these fragmented body parts became more abstracted and diagrammatic—almost a kind of visual shorthand for male and female: genitalia, breasts, arms and legs, even internal body parts like bones, rib cages, hearts, and brains. Each of these became recurring icons, separately offering seemingly specific meanings and associations for the artist. The works’ colors became increasingly bold: blood red, azure, dazzling yellows, greens, and oranges, pinks.
This prolific mature stage of Brice’s artistic evolution certainly represents his inner reconciliation of love and estrangement. Sexuality and the body as revealed in these later works are simple and profound facts of life—a life force, a physical force but perhaps one of metaphysical origin, beyond emotional engagement or entanglement, beyond judgment, perhaps beyond comprehension or even the need for comprehension. Recognition is all.
