Brutalist Boathouse

This past summer, our friend, Teel, visited us at Rosslyn. Her energy and unique perspective made for plenty of indelible memories, but she recently added another visual chapter to her Rosslyn legacy. For Susan’s birthday, she painted and gifted her this potent painting, a brutalist boathouse rendering as captivating as its subject.

Originating in (and most often associated with) architectural design, brutalism is an aesthetic style that exposes — indeed celebrates — the raw ingredients of creation and construction. Materials themselves, unadorned and unembellished, feature prominently in brutalist art, architecture, and design.

I asked Teel if she might offer some insight into her brutalist boathouse painting.

I chose brutalism as the style I wanted to express in my rendering of the boathouse because brutalism in design accentuates the raw materials used – wood, glass, paint, stone… I see that little building not as ‘sweet’ or ‘cute’ (because it’s small, neat, and charming) but as robust, high-functioning, built-to-last. It has legacy and importance. It’s a building of service. I was trying to convey how it felt and looked to me as I walked towards it. I wanted the piece to have texture and depth so I layered gesso before the oil paint. Having the wreath on the door was important – it means “welcome”.

— Teel Lawler-Flores Lunsford

Teel’s words ring true. On the one hand, this Eastlake inspired structure is small and neat and charming. And yet its heritage as a utilitarian pier, coal storage facility, and captain’s accommodation for the Kestrel certainly do qualify it as a utility building. It was built for service. And though it is a handsome little dockhouse, it is robust. It has endured more than a century of inclement weather, harsh winters, ice flows, spring floods, and inevitable rot and decay.

Teel’s brutalist boathouse captures this remarkable anomaly, Rosslyn’s welcoming and enduring function-built boathouse. Bravo!

Often realism and verisimilitude obscure deeper truths. It takes the curator’s craft, the artist’s alchemy, the storyteller’s scalpel to reveal what might otherwise escape us.

What is Brutalism?

Before signing off, I’d like to append a little context to help familiarize you with brutalism if it’s new to you and/or the name is offputting.

Brutalism is a utilitarian aesthetic movement that shuns decoration in favor of exposing and celebrating the raw materials used to construct the design…

The reason why brutalism has been able to jump between such wildly different design disciplines is that it tends to describe more of a mindset than visual characteristics. By exposing materials of construction, brutalism has nothing to hide. It trades lofty ideals of beauty for the cold, hard truth.

 (Source: 99designs)