Brotherly love

The Bregas embrace their techniques

by Leon Nigrosh

DAVID BREGA AND DOUGLAS BREGA: OIL & WATER

at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, 220 State Street, Springfield, through December 31.

If you really want to double your pleasure and fun, head out to the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts for the current exhibit of paintings by Springfield-born twin brothers David and

Douglas Brega. While each artist is well established and admired within his own genre, this is their first joint show in 20 years. And their works are knockouts.

As boys, the twins spent their time constantly doodling and drawing, and eventually attended art school together, where, under the tutelage of their mentor, Ken Davies, both became excellent draftsmen. This strong foundation in drawing is still easily seen in each of the 70 works currently on display. But in 1971, Douglas made an important decision. While David continued to hone his skills in oil, Douglas felt that oil paints were not giving him the expression he needed, so he switched to watercolors.

Douglas's watercolors focus on New England people and places. Spanning more than 25 years, each of his 31 works on paper on exhibit showcases his skills as an illustrator and master of a very dry drybrush technique. His pencil studies of buildings and people are as alive with tonality and shading as his richly textured watercolors are. Compare his 1992 graphite on paper Vermont Meeting House with his 2000 watercolor on paper Meeting House, and aside from the latter's very subtle colorations, the only major difference is a flock of tiny birds in the distance added to the latest version. Otherwise, the shading, the sky, and the view are almost identical in presentation. Throughout the exhibition we can see the obvious growth in Douglas's abilities. A 1984 watercolor, Clesson's Pitchfork, while showing great skill in the use of drybrush to create the realistic skin texture of a wizened farmer, lacks the sophisticated use of understated background found in more recent works, such as Walter at Sea -- a portrait of a weather-worn Old Salt.

Whether it's an elderly lady carrying a box of tomatoes or a lighthouse facing an agitated sea, Douglas treats his subjects with equal respect and intensity. His 25X40-inch watercolor, House on the Bluff -- a grand, grey, Nantucket manor -- is handled with the same care and intensity he applies to his portraits, paying great attention to detail, texture, and insight into personality.

David, on the other hand, is a master of trompe l'oeil or "fool the eye," a technique that makes us see things as they are not. In his 1984 oil on masonite The Editor, we see that old curmudgeon Horace Greeley in a photograph pinned to a timeworn and repaired cabinet door with an assortment of stamped letters stuck to it. But wait. It's all perfectly flat. No brass knob or hinges, no matchstick, no letters or photo. David's mastery of this trompe l'oeil is bar none. The way he captures light and shade and bends colors to make us believe we're looking at a real box of real crayons is phenomenal. His oil on masonite Key Shadow pretends to be a close-up of a time-worn old desk -- beaten, scratched, and even once broken into, with a key inserted in the top lock. Except there's no key, just a long, angled shadow that suggests that there might be one.

David's attention to detail goes beyond his painting to the frames that hold them. He wanders the "antique" shops and yard sales in search for that just-right aged second-hand frame, which then makes such pictures as Grade 1 and Grade 4 even more baffling. The interplay between the painted images of wood-framed school blackboards and the actual weathered frames surrounding the paintings only enhances David's counterfeit three-dimensionality.

Many of his paintings carry a note of humor. Rooftop, for example, shows an antique toy car with an equally dated child's toy top on its roof. His largest entry in this exhibit is a six-foot-tall homage to the painters of the Hudson River School -- themselves seekers after the real. For this tour-de-force, David spent two years painstakingly reproducing nine paintings by Bierstadt, Cole, and others along with their "photographs," and painted them placed together pyramid-like on a large easel. The inside joke is that he switched two of the photos and, after admiring his incredibly realistic efforts, we are left to figure out who's who.

This is a very user-friendly exhibition. The drawings and paintings are all easily understandable, open, and affable, just like the twin brothers who paint for the love of it.

The Springfield Museum is open Wednesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (413) 263-6800.