For years, every time Joe Bradley made a show of new paintings, they appeared to be the work of a new artist. When he showed his stacks of colorful, modular panels, they suggested affable robots and regal sailboats and the whole lineage of geometric, monochromatic painting. Later, he made a group of “schmagoo” paintings—big canvases with single, crude grease-pencil drawings of the most dumbed- down icons—a fish, a cross, a Superman logo, a stick figure— completed in what appeared to be a matter of seconds. Other shows have included screen prints, doodles on scrap paper, spartan collages, and blank tan canvases with painted frames.
Recently, through hopscotch experimentation, Bradley has settled into a more consistent style of abstract-figurative painting. Using oil-paint sticks, he draws on raw canvas with the abandon of a feisty child searching for a subject. Intermittently, he’ll drop the half-finished pieces onto the floor and let them roll around until they accrete a patina of “shmutz,” as he calls it. Sometimes he’ll stitch together multiple in-progress canvases in an effort to further “glitch” whatever techniques he accidentally acquires. In this way, he’s become undeniably skilled at making the unskilled mark, and the results are transcendent: standing in front of his new work stirs up a visual epiphany of lowbrow wisdom.
For this interview, I visited Bradley twice: once at his old studio in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, and later at his current, exponentially larger space in the Brook- lyn Navy Yard. The new studio has allowed his paintings to expand in size, and the entire multiroom complex was cov- ered—floors and walls—with drawings and paintings, near ready to be shipped off for a European show. As we spoke, we flipped through his piles of art books and Bradley smoked more cigarettes than I could count. A few days later, I ran into him in my neighborhood, where his boy, Basil, was buzzing around the block, and we discovered that we live only a few feet from each other. The below transcription captures the be- ginning of the conversation that now continues, every so of- ten, on the sidewalk in front of our homes.
Recently, through hopscotch experimentation, Bradley has settled into a more consistent style of abstract-figurative painting. Using oil-paint sticks, he draws on raw canvas with the abandon of a feisty child searching for a subject. Intermittently, he’ll drop the half-finished pieces onto the floor and let them roll around until they accrete a patina of “shmutz,” as he calls it. Sometimes he’ll stitch together multiple in-progress canvases in an effort to further “glitch” whatever techniques he accidentally acquires. In this way, he’s become undeniably skilled at making the unskilled mark, and the results are transcendent: standing in front of his new work stirs up a visual epiphany of lowbrow wisdom.
For this interview, I visited Bradley twice: once at his old studio in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, and later at his current, exponentially larger space in the Brook- lyn Navy Yard. The new studio has allowed his paintings to expand in size, and the entire multiroom complex was cov- ered—floors and walls—with drawings and paintings, near ready to be shipped off for a European show. As we spoke, we flipped through his piles of art books and Bradley smoked more cigarettes than I could count. A few days later, I ran into him in my neighborhood, where his boy, Basil, was buzzing around the block, and we discovered that we live only a few feet from each other. The below transcription captures the be- ginning of the conversation that now continues, every so of- ten, on the sidewalk in front of our homes.
THE BELIEVER: How do you start these new paintings?
JOE BRADLEY: There’s a long period of just groping around. I usually have some kind of source material to work off of—a draw- ing 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, be- cause I am working on unprepared canvas, I get this bleed- though. The oil paint will bleed though to the other side, so I get this sort of incidental mark.
BLVR: Is that a lot of what you see here? Is the incidental mark?
JB: Yeah, I mean, I could point it out. Like on this one [point- ing], that kind of pinkish triangle to the left is bled through.
BLVR: The purpose of priming a canvas is to prevent it from doing that, from...
JB: Rotting.
BLVR: Is that a worry of yours?
JB: I don’t lose any sleep over it. As long as they’re OK dur- ing my lifetime. Maybe someone else will have to deal with it.
BLVR: Do you just like the look of raw canvas?
JB: I like the way it looks, and it feels more like drawing to me. The raw canvas looks like paper to me. Like newsprint. With a primed, gessoed canvas I feel compelled to fill the whole thing in. You lose some of the drawing...
BLVR: There’s also just this atmosphere of—
JB: Shmutz.
JB: Shmutz.
BLVR: Do you let this shmutz dictate what you paint? Do you riff off of accidents?
JB: The shmutz—the accidents are important. There’s not a lot of really direct drawing in these things.
BLVR: “Direct drawing” meaning you have an idea and then you try to make that idea?
JB: Yeah, it’s more about conjuring something over time, rather than having... you know, thinking, Oh I’d like to draw a pony here, and then just going for it. And living with it.
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