Brasher, who came to MIT in 1997, worked as an undergraduate researcher in Cynthia Breazeal’s Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab, and studied video art and painting as he earned his degree in visual arts.
After graduation, he started as a technician at Boston Dynamics and set up makeshift art studios in Somerville basements, where he transitioned from figurative to abstract painting. “Once I gave myself permission to focus on abstract work, it opened everything up—it felt freeing and authentic,” he says.
Brasher now lives with his partner and two young children in Harvard, and works three 10-hour days at Boston Dynamics prototyping robotic sensors, leaving the rest of the time for family and the studio. Over the years, he’s participated in artist residencies in New York, Italy, Romania, and France and exhibited his work as a member artist of the Bromfield Gallery in Boston’s SoWa district.
Since he earned his master’s in fine arts at Lesley University in 2022, his career has taken a leap forward with representation from the Chase Young Gallery, which has brought him more exposure. His current work uses a variety of materials, including acrylics and watercolors, to create layers of “chaotic motion” that both reveal and expose the patterns swirling underneath. He says the “many worlds” theory of quantum mechanics is one inspiration for his attempt to capture multiple realities at the same time on a two-dimensional surface. “There’s a sense of resolution I am seeking,” he says. “You have to knock things out of balance before putting them back together.”