Joe Bradley (b. 1975)

“I don’t like to hear people’s elaborate excuses for making art, so I don’t try to make any myself ... there’s no way of telling what people think or what’s coming across.” – Joe Bradley

“I usually have some kind of source material to work off of–a drawing or a found image–but this ends up getting buried in the process. Most of the painting happens on the floor, then I’ll pin them up periodically to see what they look like on the wall. I work on both sides of the painting too. If one side starts to feel unmanageable, I’ll turn it over and screw around with the other side. That was something that just happened out of being a frugal guy, I guess. But then, because I am working on unprepared canvas, I get this bleed through. The oil paint will bleed through to the other side, so I get this sort of incidental mark.” – Joe Bradley