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Art & Life with Brad Teare

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad Teare.

Brad, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I always wanted to be an artist. Being from a middle-class background growing up in Kansas I didn’t know how to achieve that end. After High School, I got a scholarship in Fine Art from the University of Idaho. But their focus was postmodernism which didn’t satisfy my need to acquire artistic skills. A childhood friend was studying art at Utah State University which had a highly regarded program at the time. I transferred and began studying illustration.

I met my wife Debra Teare, who later became an acclaimed trompe l’oeil painter, and moved to New York. We wanted to live in New York City but found it cost prohibitive. We gradually widened our search and ended up living in Rhinebeck, New York, a beautiful village in the Hudson Valley just a short commute from New York City. On my first foray into Manhattan, I got my first commission; an assignment from the New York Times. I continued working with the Times as I broadened my contacts and eventually connected with an agent who handled all of my illustration commissions.

Around that time I saw a show at the Metropolitan of paintings by Van Gogh which profoundly affected me. I began my search for a unique style that embraced the power and poetry his work embodied. I started my blog Thick Paint (bradteare.com) and began publicly exploring how to deal with increasingly textured paint. I had some success, selling my work from several galleries, but felt I wasn’t connecting with an authentic inner core. I knew that van Gogh was fascinated by woodcut prints. I loved the explosive energy of the medium. But I was stymied in my attempts to fuse the art of woodcut with the art of landscape painting.

In order to be closer to the visual themes I loved we moved to Providence Utah, then a small town nestled in the Rocky Mountains. My previous illustration commissions were all wood engravings and woodcuts. My landscape paintings were in oils, an art form radically divergent from the art of woodcut.

I was offered an abstract show based on several studies I was doing using highly textured paint. I spent a year and a half working entirely in acrylics doing large abstract paintings. After several successful shows, I returned to landscape painting in oils. I found that my painting style had transformed dramatically. I began using palette knives exclusively, and shortly after I started doing preliminary underpaintings on black canvas using white markers, which looked and felt remarkably like woodcuts. The next step in my evolution was to print woodcuts based on the white marker paintings. Using color plein air paintings, the marker underpaintings, and the black and white woodcuts as reference material I was able to infuse my paintings with the power, rhythm, and energy I always envisioned.

It has been extremely satisfying to be able to make such a creative synthesis after such a long and often frustrating journey.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I want the color and energy of my paintings to captivate the viewer, so they engage in an imaginary journey through the two-dimensional surface. I am concerned with visual power as expressed by texture and color. I use field effects, the juxtapositioning of complementary colors, to accentuate and magnify each color. I use palette knives to achieve energetic rhythm and texture.

What responsibility, if any, do you think artists have to use their art to help alleviate problems faced by others? Has your art been affected by issues you’ve concerned about?
I think the role of the artist is expanding to include a much larger responsibility. By repeated exposure, people are becoming connoisseurs in a broader range of art forms. Of course, many artists legitimately pursue the conventional postmodernist path of political consciousness, but people are realizing that art can perform less prosaic, more poetic functions as well.

My art is a refuge from the cacophony of the modern world without being atavistic or in denial about the reality or harshness of modernity in any way. Once I was preparing an open house in my studio. I took down all the notes and stretchers from the walls and put up my newly painted canvases. A friend came by and said, “You’ve added more lighting!” I replied that I hadn’t added any new lights. He refused to believe me insisting that I had at least put in brighter bulbs. I get the same response at my gallery exhibits. People remark how much light the shows have. With my paintings, I hope to bring light and energy into my collector’s lives as if each painting were a perpetually charged battery.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I have a website (http://bradteare.com/) with a painting portfolio as well as links to my galleries, woodcuts, and blog.

I sell my paintings in several nationally acclaimed galleries, including in Santa Fe at the Manitou Galleries. (https://www.manitougalleries.com/artists/Brad-Teare-319690), Leopold Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri (https://anthonysfineart.com/blogs/blog/brad-teare-landscapes-made-like-no-other).

People can support my work via the galleries or through my Etsy shop for woodcuts (https://www.etsy.com/shop/BradTeareWoodcuts) and via my Gumroad store for instructional videos (https://gumroad.com/bradteare). Artists can also view my free videos on my Youtube channel which features over a hundred instructional l videos (https://www.youtube.com/bradteare)

My favorite social media is Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bradteare/) where people can see all my new paintings and woodcuts. I also occasionally do live studio feeds via Instagram.

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Brad Teare
Debra Teare

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition, please let us know here.

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