Cultured Magazine: You are self-taught. Does that mean you've spent a lot of time looking at books?

Marcus Brutus: Well, I’ve drawn my entire life and I would just save images, anything I liked.

CM: How did this body of work begin? Is there a theme leading the way?

MB: I was already working on these images when the Harper’s show came up. Throughout the works, there was a musical or recording theme because I have climbed into high-fidelity recording systems over the pandemic for some reason. I just found ways to put that into the work.

CM: Salons are a recurring scene in your work. What attracts you to that space?

MB: It’s just something that’s been a constant in my life. From when I was younger, my dad would take me to the barbershop and then as I got older, it just became a thing where you do it every two weeks; you get a haircut. On Saturdays, the women in my family would always wake up early to go to the hair salon.

CM: What's your relationship to realism?

MB: I never want the burden of capturing reality, so I just let it be after a certain point. When I was teaching myself how to paint, I got to a certain point, and I really embraced my limitations. I try to capture something that feels a bit real, but then, obviously, I go against that with the extremes of bright colors.

​​​​​​​CM: When you are painting, what comes first?

​​​​​​​MB: The face.