His art is densely layered, pictorial and conceptual, that simultaneously operates in multiple dimensions. There is a dazzling concentration of energy that emerges through weightless pure forms. It is hard to place his enigmatic art historically. Not quite here, not quite there, it is a float between past and present or perhaps free from it all. It is a unique and personal style that is evolved gradually over many years of perseverance and laborious work and it is informed by years of formal education in art, philosophy, and contemporary and eastern music. The fact that he blooms later in life is a testament to him being a true seeker who continues to explore and evolve.
Like most artists, Brad began painting from young age. A native of Chicago, he grew up in Los Angeles. Brad studied art at Chouinard Art School, philosophy at Los Angeles City College, and graduated from Otis Art Institute, MFA program. He continued his studies with three years of private lessons from the pioneer Californian abstractionist Peter Krasnow. This laid the foundation for much of the painterly explorations of the following years.
But he soon found himself at odds with the Los Angeles art scene of 1970s, its shift to pop art and its focus on external necessities. He found it a limiting environment that was running out of creative steam. Seeking for his own creative purpose, style and unique contribution, he needed unrestrained freedom. He was drawn to natural environment and those painters who process it. Brad relocated to Santa Barbara. The pristine natural environment surrounding the city became the catalyst for a lengthy search for a personal direction in painting.
The natural environment was only one aspect of a polarity driving his creative process, the other pole was music that became an important resource for the development of his complex layering. He was inspired by unpredictability of the experimental style of contemporary composers such as Phillip Glass and Malcolm Goldstein and was fascinated with the variation of modal systems of the Middle Eastern music. He studied Makam (Middle Eastern modes) at the University of California Santa Barbara by world renowned authority, Professor Scott Marcus. Over the years, Brad has appeared in many Turkish and Persian musical events, playing kemenche and violin alongside of masters from the Middle East. He was also involved in several musical projects combining Makam with contemporary Western avant-garde music.
His study of the modal system known as “Makam” led him to create a unique approach to visual form equivalent to the intricate improvisational possibilities of Makam. He explains: “in Middle Eastern music, interweaving melodic variations are at the service of nuances and shadings of moods and emotions. In this system exists many more degrees or intervals of tones than is common in Western musical theory. These notes known as quartertones are not in harmonic intervals and thus create a sense of instability and longing for resolution, hence the emotionality of these melodic motifs.”
Brad introduced this system to painting. According to him “To convey a philosophical or deeper reflective meaning using only forms and colors on a canvas requires a constraint, a system, a context or as in musical terms, a mode. Both painting and musical composition use rhythmic cycles (repeating fixed patterns of specific lengths) and create extended structures. Superimposing these different patterns eventually refers back to the original form. When these forms are combined some extremely interesting and complex structures are produced. Working first with the rhythmic elements of space and line and then the calligraphic qualities of brush mark enables moving forward into color. These elements could be structured into a modal system. The exciting thing about this way of working is the structured improvisational freedom within a constraint provides dynamic exchanges of forms, an evolutionary fractal process.
Having numerous exhibitions primarily in Santa Barbara, and after he found his own unique artistic contribution Brad relocated to Los Angeles to further his involvement with the contemporary art world from which he had been isolated for years. Today, he continues painting while working as an art conservator for clients such as ACE gallery and Mary Corse amongst other.
CHOUINARD ART SCHOOL - Art
Los Angeles City College – Philosophy
OTIS ART INSTITUTE (MFA program) – Art
PETER KRASNOW (The pioneer Californian abstractionist) - Art
Professor Scott Marcus (a world renowned authority) – Music
the subject of a painting to be the painting itself. Through late impressionism and constructivism into the expressionist movements of the 20th and 21st century, painting has maintained a validity in the art mainstream. “If I am part of a context it would be there and the explorations of contemporary music both in the West and the Middle East”.
The painting process involves creating many formative layers which are then spontaneously re-examined arriving at the synthesis of geometric regularity and painterly accident.
The process of building and accumulating material and forms on the surface is intrinsic to the meaning of each individual variation in the paintings.
This allows for the application of a sense of craft and vigor in the fine tuning of the surface. Ultimately suggesting a kind of sanctifying elemental presence.