Gaining Perspective: Dawn's Early Light, Cynthia Brantley, 2020, colored pencil, 19 x 25 in. / 48.26 x 63.5 cm.

Cynthia Brantley: Geometry, Light, and Inner Landscapes

December 18, 2025 Gavin Coates

Featured image: Gaining Perspective: Dawn's Early Light, Cynthia Brantley, 2020, colored pencil, 19 x 25 in. / 48.26 x 63.5 cm.

Cynthia Brantley’s abstract language bridges geometry, atmosphere, and emotional resonance, presenting visual meditations on structure, uncertainty, and the unseen forces that shape human experience.

Cynthia Brantley creates geometric and atmospheric abstractions that explore structure, emotion, and the subtle tension between order and uncertainty.

Across three works spanning more than a decade, she explores containment, expansion, fragility, and the quiet tension between order and dissolution. Together, these pieces form a narrative about perception, how we map meaning onto form, color, and space.

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"X" In Browns, Cynthia Brantley, 2016, colored pencil, 16 x 20 in. / 40.64 x 50.8 cm.

In X In Browns, Brantley uses colored pencil to construct a soft, glowing field interrupted by four precise diagonal lines that meet at the center. The composition is reductive yet charged; the subtle gradient surrounding the “X” creates a sense of pressure, as though the form is pushing outward from behind the surface. The muted golden-brown palette enhances the meditative quality of the piece, inviting viewers to consider boundaries, how they define space, how they constrain movement, and how they can simultaneously stabilize and restrict.

THE DISPOSITION OF ORANGE, Cynthia Brantley, 2023, colored pencil, 32 x 32 in. / 81.28 x 81.28 cm.

The Disposition of Orange expands Brantley’s geometric vocabulary into celestial territory. A radiant sphere hovers at the center, intersected by faint, cross-shaped planes that resemble energy fields or architectural scaffolding. The luminous gradients, built from meticulously layered pencil lines, give the orb a planetary presence, echoing the artist’s own reflection on Earth’s precarious position today. The work quietly recalls the cosmic perspective in the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, where the metaphysical and earthly collide. Here, Brantley suggests both containment and suspension: a world held in place, yet yearning to move.

''When a Happy Thing Falls", Cynthia Brantley, 2010, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 in. / 101.6 x 152.4 cm.

Referencing a line from Rilke, When a Happy Thing Falls marks Brantley’s transition away from representational painting toward abstraction. Soft blue forms radiate across a dreamlike sky, converging in a circular formation filled with angular, crystalline projections. The geometry feels delicate yet monumental, like a collapsing structure or a fragile crown suspended above water. The atmospheric blues contrast with the precise internal lines, producing a sense of emotional shift, an elegy for what dissolves and a reverence for what remains. The poetic title deepens the emotional register, guiding viewers toward the tension between beauty and impermanence.

Across these three works, Brantley articulates a consistent inquiry: how do structures, emotional, geometric, or cosmic, hold together, shift, or fracture under pressure? Whether through the quiet tension of intersecting lines, the planetary glow of a suspended sphere, or the atmospheric fragility of a crystalline form, her art situates viewers inside spaces of contemplation. The result is a body of work that feels both analytical and spiritual, charting the invisible architecture of inner life.

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