Biography
Brad Blackman is an internationally collected artist working primarily in acrylic on canvas. He uses foggy, misty, liminal landscapes as a metaphor for the psyche, creating personal experiences on canvas. Blackman has shown his work in places as diverse as his native Nashville, Tennessee, Boston, Massachussetts, and Florence, Italy. He received his BFA degree from Harding University and lives outside of Nashville.
Statement
Brad Blackman is an artist who primarily paints with acrylic on canvas. Using landscape as a metaphor for the psyche, Blackman creates intense personal experiences masterfully constructed by means of adding and removing layers of paint, drawing the viewer into a transitional moment.
His paintings don’t always reference reference reality. The landscapes are deconstructed and obscured to the point that meaning is internalized and interpretations become personal. By applying abstraction, he ties together aspects of landscape and emotion, resting comfortably on the threshold between states. Rather than presenting a factual representation of reality, an illusion is constructed to project the inner workings of our souls onto the canvas.
Landscape becomes a metaphor for the inner reality of the viewer. By crystalizing otherwise fleeting, imaginary moments, he meditates on past experiences as well as future possibilities, attaching the real to the imagined, seeking beauty in liminal spaces.
Brad Blackman currently lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee.
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