The 20th century Lancaster artists David Brumbach and Charles Demuth had much in common. Both were talented, prolific artists inspired by local architecture; they each had professional careers spanning about two decades, both worked in studios on the east side of downtown Lancaster, lost their fathers at a young age and had strong relationships with their mothers.
And both artists had Type 1 diabetes – a chronic condition marked by the pancreas’ inability to produce insulin – a disease that contributed to their all-too-early deaths.
The Demuth Museum explores the work of David Brumbach and how diabetes impacted the artist’s life and work with its “David Brumbach: Fields of Vision” exhibit, which runs from Nov. 5- Dec. 23. The exhibit also includes details on Demuth’s experiences with diabetes.
The exhibit marks the 30th anniversary of Brumbach’s death in 1992 at age 43 and coincides with National Diabetes Awareness Month in November.
“David Brumbach: Fields of Vision” features a dozen paintings and drawings by Brumbach including a large-scale work from his “sick bed series” and a sketchbook of 136 drawings made during a three-month stay at the hospital in the ‘80s. The faces and masks featured in the sketchbook reveal the artist’s emotions as he coped with his condition.
“Some of his work really focuses on his experience with the disease,” says Abby Baer, executive director of the Demuth Foundation. “He did a lot of masks and faces and he said in an interview at one time that those stemmed out of his fear and vulnerability and the darkness he was experiencing with different complications with diabetes, including (losing) his leg.”
Focused on his art
Brumbach was born in Lititz in 1948. When he was 12, his father had a heart attack after shoveling snow and died. Brumbach began painting in his early teens, and at age 17, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
A quote from Brumbach featured on one of the panels in the exhibit details his first physical experiences with diabetes:
“I began losing a lot of weight…and everything became blurry. It went on for a couple of weeks.”
Brumbach attended the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1970, he came back to Lancaster to set up a studio where he painted striking images full of dramatic lighting of Lancaster County architecture and other subjects and styles.
Brumbach continued painting through the ‘70s and ‘80s despite deteriorated vision due to diabetic retinopathy. The disease took his leg in 1985. Brumbach died on Feb 27, 1992, at age 43 from a brain tumor. Brumbach was also struggling with his diabetes and other conditions at the time of his death.
But friends recall him maintaining a positive outlook, a strong work ethic and a sense of humor right to the end of his life.
“David was very lowkey. He always remained upbeat,” says Bob LeMin, a close friend of Brumbach’s, a member of the Demuth Museum Board of Trustees and author of “David Brumbach: Talent, Paper and Paint.” “I never heard David complain about his struggle with diabetes. He considered it a challenge, but thought many other folks were in a worse situation than he was.”
LeMin says Brumbach, like Demuth, seemed more focused on his art rather than his health and wasn’t in the habit of discussing diabetes – or art for that matter – preferring to talk about local restaurants, the neighborhood, baseball or cars.
Lancaster-based artist Jerome Hershey agrees.
“I would say that David overcame any difficulties that arose from his diabetes as best he could and didn’t speak about them except to make jokes occasionally,” Hershey says. “We joked and laughed a lot. It wasn’t his style to go on about his work or his health.”
Star Barn admiration
If Brumbach was reluctant to share his feelings about diabetes, his work may offer some hints.
Baer says she was intrigued by Brumbach’s use of borders in some of his abstract work as his vision deteriorated due to diabetes. And his emotional drawings made during stretches in the hospital show haunting distorted and occasionally humorous faces seeming to appear from the ether.
“David Brumbach: Fields of Vision” also includes paintings of the Star Barn – a subject Brumbach painted often – and the paintings show the conditions of the barn gradually mirroring his own.
“The Star Barn was a subject that he returned to frequently over the course of about a decade and a half from the late ‘70s to the early ‘90s,” Baer says. “He would paint the Star Barn in different ways and one of the reasons we chose to feature it for this was because over time you can see the Star Barn changing as it’s getting older and kind of decaying a little bit before its restoration. His ability to perceive color was impacted by diabetes and so the tones that he uses in his painting change with that particular subject matter.”
LeMin recalls both Brumbach and the Star Barn were in bad shape in the early ‘90s.
“The barn was just about ready to fall apart by ’91 or ’92,” says LeMin, who photographed the barn around that time. (The Star Barn was rebuilt and relocated to the Stone Gables Estate in Elizabethown in 2017.)
LeMin wrote in “David Brumbach: Talent, Paper and Paint” that Brumbach noticed the barn on a trip to and from a gallery in Camp Hill. Brumbach was attracted to the stars on the barn and the architecture.
“It is like a cathedral in a barn,” Brumbach is quoted as saying in the book.
One of the paintings in the exhibit – a 1987 acrylic piece called “Charles Demuth’s Birthplace” – shows the artist’s admiration for his fellow Lancaster artist Charles Demuth. The elegant painting features a large tree in the foreground obscuring a building half draped in mid-afternoon shadows. Brumbach’s cold bright blue sky reminds viewers that though diabetes contributed to the early deaths of Brumbach and Demuth, their art remains vibrant and alive.
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