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Donald Bradford's Paintings Have a Modernist Spirit

6/29/2018

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 Written by Mary Ore for Luxe Magazine

Raised in a house with a 24-hour wedding chapel as the living room, Oakland painter Donald Bradford couldn’t help but start out in performance art. “There was a pulpit and pews, and there were two bathrooms where the couple could change, and they would come out in their wedding clothes,” he recalls. While his uncle led the service, he and his cousins peeked out from the kitchen door, giggling at the height of the drama–the kiss.
Fast forward past the third-grade teacher who noticed his artistic talent, past the bully he distracted with quick sketches of Mickey Mouse, past the two years in college studying theater arts, to the moment he realized acting made him too nervous. Bradford turned to painting, although his early canvases have a performative feel: He staged his friends in scenes from mythology and the Bible, and then he painted them.
Bradford has long moved on from theatrical scenes, but his interest in narrative–and ritual–remains. He tends to do more than a dozen paintings on a theme, and his series have included 1940s love letters between a Petaluma suitor and a Wellesley College student; open books about artists; his own bulletin boards on which, Bradford says, “images and news clippings were chosen to almost set up a narrative.” In all of these works, story is suggested, but not unfolded, for the viewer. While there’s reverence, there’s also wit, as in one series in which he isolates the ritual objects of a wedding and examines each one.
These are still lifes with a modernist attitude. “The classical, typical still life is a whole bunch of stuff,” Bradford says. “But I have austere, flat backgrounds, and I like doing a really simple thing– one glass with a flower in it, one open book, one votive candle.” The Bay Area Figurative Movement was inevitably an influence. “I’m probably more of a ‘painterly painter’ because of them,” says Bradford. “From far away, my work can appear photographic, but up close, the brushstrokes are very loose.” His palette, inspired by Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, is primarily “beautiful shades of white and grays with accents of color,” Bradford says. “You’d never call me a bright colorist.”
The artist’s studio is three rooms off the house he shared with his late partner, Richard Bassett, a textile and Braille artist. They each had a studio and shared a “dirty studio” in between. Since Bassett’s death five years ago, “I just spread out,” says Bradford. “I go back and forth between paintings–undercoats or drawings on one, which I can make in a distracted mood, or filling out details on another, which requires real concentration.”
Throughout the studio, a new series is in progress. When friends traveling in Europe sent the artist photos of hand-written prayers parishioners left in churches, Bradford soon began to write his own–for a beloved cousin with cancer, for ill friends or for those affected by mass shootings. His Prayer Paintings will appear in a solo show at the Andrea Schwartz Gallery in San Francisco from June 13 to July 20. Here, both ritual and story come together, but in these paintings, the words, too, are his own.
Photos by Brandon Sullivan
See full article here

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Andrea Schwartz Gallery

545 4th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 | 415.495.2090 | info@asgallery.com
  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Previous
    • By Year >
      • 2023 >
        • Group Show
        • Tom Bolles
      • 2022 >
        • Group Show 2022
        • Deborah Bell & Heather Patterson
        • Suhas Bhujbal
        • Ned Evans & Mitch Jones
        • Barbara Kronlins & John Nelson
        • Patrick Dintino
        • Donald Bradford
        • Wynne Hayakawa
      • 2021 >
        • Group Show 2021
        • Ferdinanda Florence & Gwen Manfrin
        • Heather Patterson
        • Piero Spadaro
        • Cara Barer
        • COLOR
        • Tom Bolles
        • John Belingheri & Albert Dicruttalo
        • Robin Kandel
      • 2020 >
        • Gallery Group Show
        • Ned Evans
        • Suhas Bhujbal
        • Alex Couwenberg & Jeff Metz
        • Stitch Group Show
        • Patrick Dintino
        • Sarah Williams
        • Art Miami 2020
      • 2019 >
        • Gallery Group Show
        • Out of Town Group Show
        • Tom Bolles
        • Piero Spadaro
        • Cara Barer
        • Summer In SOMA
        • Wynne Hayakawa
        • John Belingheri
        • Danae Anderson
      • 2018 >
        • Group Show
        • Ned Evans & Jeff Metz
        • Gwen Manfrin & Tim Yankosky
        • Alex Couwenberg
        • Donald Bradford
        • Barbara Kronlins & Sarah Wililams
        • Patrick Dintino
        • Suhas Bhujbal
        • Seamus Conley & Albert Dicruttalo
      • 2017 >
        • Mitch Jones Julian Voss Andreae Exhibition 2017
        • John Belingheri Exhibition 2017
        • John Bonick - Tracy Krumm Exhibition
        • Chad Hasegawa
        • Cara Barer and Jamie Brunson
        • Gugger Petter
        • Tom Bolles
        • Piero Spadaro
        • Wynne Hayakawa - Ferdinand Florence
      • 2016 >
        • Anderson and Dicruttalo 2016
        • Robin Kandel
        • Patrick Dintino
        • ASG - SFAI MFA Highlights
        • Peter Combe
        • Suhas Bhujbal
        • Palladini and Weinstein
        • Alex Couwenberg
        • Imboden and Lobato
      • 2015 >
        • Barer and Hsu
        • John Belingheri
        • Krumm and Manfrin
        • Surface
        • Tom Bolles
        • Seamus Conley
        • Bell, Corrigan, and Tidwell
        • John Nelson
        • LA | SF
      • 2014 >
        • Suhas Bhujbal
        • Philip Buller
        • Patrick Dintino
        • Florence and Hayakawa
        • Bonick and Yankosky
        • Gugger Petter
        • Brunson and Kronlins
        • Robin Kandel
        • Crowd
  • Artists
    • Search by Name
  • News
  • Gallery
    • Staff
    • Gallery Rental
    • Artist Submissions
  • Contact
  • Bardessono
  • Hotel Yountville