Brad Price Tortured Beauty Meyer Gallery
Brad Price Tortured Beauty
November 3 - December 14, 2017
On the cover: John Dunn Vista
40x30 oil
Meyer Gallery 225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505.983.1434 800.779.7387 www.MeyerGalleries.com
For 30 years, Price made his living as a distinguished illustrator, graphic designer, and art educator. He lived in Central America and South America for a period of seven years and during that time he discovered a new and expressive way to paint, employing his love for color in the style of the post impressionists, combined with the influences of the great Southwest masters. For the past he past 29 years he has been honing his craft and has developed a nationwide reputation as a painter of the Southwest. He is also an instructor in the Oklahoma Baptist University School of Art. His style is that of a colorist and expressionist. He uses the technique of “simultaneous color contrast,” and with un-blended, directional stokes of thick paint, he expresses his feelings through art. The bold brushstrokes and colors in expressionist works by Price are inspired by the Southwest landscape and its rugged beauty. His work is a rebirth of the sense of style of early Taos painters and the Post-Impressionists. His works in oil are emotive and colorful with strong directional lines that he employs to guide the viewer into the world that he has seen and experienced. Jeff Tabor, artist and gallery owner, has called him the “Van Gogh of the Southwest.” Through painting Brad Price makes an emotional visit to the scene he is painting. He experiences again what it was like to be there. He can smell the chamisa and hear the waxy clacking of the aspen leaves as they blow in the wind. He can once again enjoy the breeze as it comes down from the mountains. When he paints, he is there. When he hangs a painting on the wall, he invites others to be there with him. The amazing landscape of Northern New Mexico is his primary focus. The light in New Mexico has a luminescent quality all its own, and Price seeks to capture its effects on canvas. His style emphasizes contrast and bold complementary color. His paintings are a total experience placed on canvas. He has witnessed the wonder of creation and now bears witness to that beauty for others. According to Price, “Art is experience and the sharing of experience. It is creating something new and beautiful for the world, and then sharing that with the viewer.” Price was raised in Central Oklahoma. He has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Oklahoma and a Master’s Degree in Theology for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. As an art educator, he has taught classes in art disciplines in two undergraduate programs and two graduate programs in two countries and two languages. During his graphic design career he had some firsts. in the early 1980s, he created the first color images ever sold commercially for the home computer. He also created the first national clip-art company for Youth Ministry in the Church, and he was the first “Art Missionary” commissioned by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Finally, Price was the first professional artist to teach courses on Art and the Bible at a Baptist Theological Seminary. (1983) Price has been painting the Southwest for over three decades. His work has appeared on the covers of the Santa Fe Circle Magazine and the 2012 Santa Fe Visitor’s Guide. The State of Oklahoma chose Price’s work for exhibition in the State Capitol building during its Bi-Centennial year. For the past two years, his work has been selected by the Taos Art Museum for its prestigious art auction.
In Brad Price’s impressionistic southwest landscapes, the viewer can articulate each stroke that the artist has applied to the canvas. Short, wavy lines reminiscent of Van Gogh’s broken brushwork form breezy cottonwoods, exalted skies and mesas that glow beneath vivid desert sunsets. These pure strokes of complimentary colors vibrate against each other, creating a brilliant effect in the viewer’s eye. This technique is called “simultaneous color contrast,” and was first incorporated into art by the Post-Impressionists and Fauvists around the turn of the century. Price discovered the technique in college and eventually adopted it into his work. “When I was in art school at the University of Oklahoma, a Canadian teacher had me paint huge canvases of pure color with a big brush,” he explains. “He wanted us to experiment with the interrelationships of colors…the way colors moved forward and backward from one another, pushing and pulling from the surface. It began then,” he says of his current painting style.
Apache Canyon 14x11 oil On the previous page: Walpi Mesa
30x40 oil
Embudo Lane
30x40 oil
Brad Price is drawn to the ruggedness of the southwest. According to the artist, there is a “tortured beauty” to New Mexico that has always fascinated him. Up until this summer, all of Price’s inspiration came from regular trips to Taos, Abiquiu and other areas of northern New Mexico. This past August after his regular pilgrimage to the southwest, however, Price kept driving. He explored every corner of the American west from Canyon de Chelly and the Grand Canyon, to Monument Valley and Lake Powell, to the Redwoods of California and Tetons in Jackson Hole. The artist spent three weeks exploring parts of the country he had never experienced before, taking photos and absorbing inspiration for a new body of work as he went.
Taos Chamisa 40x30 oil On the previous page: Canyon de Chelly
24x30 oil
Mountain Man
24x30 oil
Near Vadito
20x16 oil
Galisteo Chamisa
24x30 oil
Ranchos de Taos
24x30 oil
Taos Morada
36x48 oil
Throughout his recent western travels and in his routine trips to New Mexico, Price seeks out remote and untouched “jewels” as potential subjects for paintings. The artist’s adventurous spirit and commitment to the “treasure hunt” as he calls it, takes him miles off the beaten path on uncharted trails, down long winding roads and to the tops of mountains. In “Taos Morada,” Price’s subject is an old adobe dwelling that he serendipitously came across on a back road in Taos. We must look beyond the brush and gnarled trees in the foreground to see the building, feeling Price’s excitement for this unexpected find as we search out its shape against the landscape. In “Wotan’s Throne,” Price drove over an hour from the Grand Canyon’s main lodge on the north rim in order to find the formation depicted in the painting. “You have to just take off up a road and see what you can find,” he says. “There are times when all I can do is get out of the car, jump up and down and laugh out loud. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to see it.”
Rio Grande Village
30x24 oil
The Tetons
30x40 oil
Taos Mountains 8x10 oil Diablo Canyon 8x10 oil Pedernal 8x10 oil
On the next page:
Sioux War Bonnet
30x40 oil
Rio Chama Vista
36x48 oil
Trampas Nocturne
16x20 oil
Embudo Moon
24x30 oil
Embudo Hill
24x30 oil
Pilar Chapel
24x30 oil
Spring Chamisa
14x11 oil
Seco Church Winter
14x11 oil
Pilar
30x40 oil
Taos Cottonwoods
24x30 oil
Wotan’s Throne
24x30 oil
Brad Price Education BFA University of Oklahoma MTS Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Selected One Man Exhibitions Taos Museum of Art Meyer Gallery, Santa Fe Art Exchange Gallery, On the plaza, Santa Fe Firehouse Art Center, Oklahoma MSB Gallery, Oklahoma Santa Fe Art Depot, Oklahoma The Chapel of the Arts, Oklahoma Cloudcroft Gallery, Cloudcroft New Mexico Gallery III, Oklahoma Wind River Gallery, Oklahoma Santa Fe Arts Festival, Norman, Oklahoma Universidad Javeriana, Cali, Colombia, South America Unicentro, Cali, Colombia, South America Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia, South America Selected Collections Private Collection, Senator Altamirano, NM Private Collection, Senator Bingaman, NM Lectures and Workshops Workshop in Alla Prima painting, Oklahoma Workshop on “Painting like Van Gogh” Drawing Course in Istanbul, Turkey Drawing Course in Morocco Drawing Course in Oklahoma Art Workshop, Cali, Colombia, South America Art Workshop, Medellin, Colombia, South America Art Workshop", Bogota, Colombia, South America Art Workshop, Panama City, Panama, Central America 15 week drawing course, Cali, Colombia, South America Taught “Art and the Church," Colombia, South America Taught “Art and the Church," Theological Seminary, USA
Brad Price Tortured Beauty
Apache Canyon Canyon de Chelley Diablo Canyon Chamisa Embudo Hill Embudo Lane Embudo Moon Embudo Village Autumn Galisteo Chamisa John Dunn Vista Las Trampas Nocturne Mountain Man Near Vadito Pedernal Pilar Pilar Chapel Ranchos de Taos Rio Chama Vista Rio Grande Village Seco Church Winter Sioux War Bonnet Spring Chamisa Taos Adobe Taos Chamisa Taos Cottonwoods Taos Morada Taos Mountains The Tetons Trampas Nocturne Walpi Mesa Wotan’s Throne
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Las Trampas Nocturne
Brad Price Tortured Beauty
16x20 oil
November 3 - December 14, 2017 Opening Reception Friday November 3, 2017 5 to 7pm
Meyer Gallery 225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505.983.1434 800.779.7387 www.MeyerGalleries.com