Observation
A painting begins with being present—watching weather, distance and light rather than simply recording a view.
MARK A. BRADFORD · CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE PAINTER
Painting the feeling of a place.
My paintings begin with direct experience, but they are completed through memory. I am drawn to the moment when light changes the emotional character of a landscape and the familiar becomes briefly extraordinary.
Working in oils with brush and palette knife, transparent layers and more gestural passages of paint, I look for a balance between representation and the physical surface of the painting.
View the Collection
Memory
Once the place has been left behind, memory edits the experience. Color, atmosphere and emotion become more important than literal detail.
Surface
Brush and palette knife keep the painted surface alive, allowing transparent passages and tactile marks to exist together.
MY JOURNEY
A lifelong passion for light and landscape.
Landscape has remained a constant because it offers an endless conversation between what is observed and what is remembered. Travel has widened that conversation: the American West, mountain winters, European coasts and Florida light each present different problems of color, scale and atmosphere.
Influences from historical painting sit alongside a contemporary interest in the flatness and physicality of the canvas. I want the viewer to recognize a place, but also to remain aware that the image is made from strokes, layers, edges and decisions.
Enter the studio“I don't paint places as they are. I paint how they remain in memory.”
MARK A. BRADFORD