Europa is pleased to present Colin Brant’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. This new body of work— comprising paintings and a single ceramic sculpture—is inspired by Crater Lake in Oregon, and particularly by a small island within it known as Phantom ship. A phantom ship, by definition, is a vessel abandoned by its crew, left to drift aimlessly. For Brant, this image becomes a metaphor for untamed nature and our relationship to wilderness.

The exhibition space features a large round window that evoked, for Brant, the perfect circularity of Crater Lake. Ghostly stains on the glass suggested a journey of the imagination. Drawing from old black-and-white photographs, vintage postcards, and stills from home movies of the lake, Brant constructed a series of paintings that reflect on geological permanence and subjective transformation. The Phantom ship appears in each work, rendered across changing seasons and varying degrees of visibility—emerging and dissolving like an apparition.

The paintings begin with translucent washes of color, allowing pigment to settle into the weave of the canvas and emphasize its texture. Loose, expressive brushstrokes serve as shorthand for light, terrain, and vegetation. Layers merge and glow: earthy umbers meet violets and emeralds in vibrant, tactile surfaces, setting off soft mauve skies and jagged blue cliffs. Iridescent marks accumulate in crystalline patterns, carrying an energy that links each work to the next.

Three paintings of galloping horses punctuate the exhibition, introducing a dynamic counterpoint to the stillness of the lake scenes. These figures embody the raw energy and freedom of the natural world, echoing the wildness at the heart of Brant’s landscapes. At the same time, they reflect his imaginative sensibility—mythic, playful, and open to the fantastical — as he engages with the idea of nature not just as place, but as a state of mind.