“Working on an equally large scale, but with a different approach to abstraction, Brook Temple builds “San Remo” and “Antibes” from dripping, black and white shapes. His starkness and force might call to mind those giants of the New York School, Hans Hoffman and Robert Motherwell. Yet Temple has a beguiling simplicity that’s all his own. Perhaps it’s his early work with that sage of color, Josef Albers, or maybe it the knowledge that comes from his excellent photography – whatever explains it, Temple always shows an extraordinary skill for vibrancy of form.“

Peter Campion
Painterly Painting: The Next Level
The Art Musuem of Los Gatos

“Brook Temple’s quintessential totemic figure is rich with visual content. Although it is female, the artist chose to create her emerging out of colorful textured fabrics, androgynous, having no clothes or breast. The highly tactile surface evolves through Temple’s use of a brush, and new to him, the use of his hands, as he creates a more intimate rendition working as a painter, sculpting the canvas. Then there is a closed figure ground connection that adds a sense of effortlessness, which is then offset by a weighted space. All these contradictory components suggest ambiguity that makes the painting even more intriguing. Lastly, and in all Temple’s art, he pushes the figure more and more towards abstraction, seeing how fare he can go by reducing the figure to its ultimate essence.“

Roberta Carasso, Ph.D
Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration
Bakersfield Museum of Art
Statement for painting “Chelsea”

“No Feat with color seems to lie beyond Temple’s capabilities.”

Thomas Albright
San Francisco Chronicle

“…There is a marked change in the new work (of Brook Temple), a change not easy to define. Compositions contain fewer elements, but that is only part of it. Color relationships have evolved and field effect similar to Rothko’s has begun to emerge in Temple’s larger canvases. It is a buzz, a level of optical stimulation that is more than Rothko but less than Vasarely. It magnetizes vision, working in long, slow pulses.”

Tom Cervenak
Artweek

“In a statement about his work, Temple writes: ’Some are often open ended equations, never finished, never resolved …timing …it’s balancing on the edge of a razor blade.’ He might as well easily have written about integrity of which the picture plane or lack of a preconceived formula …in contrast to much of the dry passionless design exercises currently voguish, Temple’s works seem very much alive.”

Newsweek

“Brook Temple’s innovativeness and risk-taking are highlighted in his new works. Large canvases whose lower most edge is fringed with unblemished beads of gloss resin drippings, and whose collaged horizontal bands are given spatial depth with a touch of confusion and an accent of logic. One can almost taste their dripping, juicy moisture.”

New York Times

“Brook Temple’s “El Capitan” is a large acrylic and collage in garish greens, blues and pinks of, for the most part of, an American flag. If the content suggest Jasper Johns, and the sensuality of the canvas calls to mind Olitsky’s work of the 50’s, this is still a well-constructed tactile image which ranges from crisp to molten.“

The Boston Globe