BIOGRAPHY

BRAD DURHAM

Abstraction lives in an uncertain territory where guidelines or signposts are vague.  Here there are no critical theories to ponder, no puzzles to be solved, no stories to be told. In a deeply engaging body of work that is far more nuanced than it may appear, Brad Durham simply invites viewers to immerse themselves in an experience of looking, thinking, and feeling.   Whereas observers of his earlier landscape paintings were on the outside looking in - seeing an original interpretation of a traditional subject matter, Durham’s new abstractions take a very different approach by effectively drawing the audience inside the frame to participate in a dialogue between forms and structure and the spaces in between.

 What insiders discover while looking at the work is a personal matter, of course. But strength and vulnerability seem to coexist as rigid contours melt into uneven planes of color activated by soft-edge lines, smeared patches and rectangles. The fact that no color is solid, no edge is crisp and clear, and no line merely travels from here to there reflects the artist’s confidence in his audience. Those who explore this unpredictable terrain are likely to find a variety of intriguing relationships between and among the components of each work. The surprising divisions of space, feathered edges, and shadowy shapes interact in a variety of ways that defy easy interpretation. Action is a matter of horizontal or vertical lines that can read as rips, tears or residue as well as purposeful marks. Quietude comes from surfaces that seem to breathe with the balance always feeling right.

 A native of California, Durham was born and raised in San Francisco. The Bay Area Figurative Arts Movement fueled his passion to become an artist, but his formal education in the subject began in 1972 at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where he later joined the faculty. In a move that foretold his current approach to artmaking, he also delved into aesthetic philosophy in 1974 at Cal State Humboldt (now Cal Poly Humboldt). Durham opened his first large studio in San Diego and moved to Los Angeles in 1985, when the creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art sparked a new art scene downtown.

 Prior to his arrival, Los Angeles had been home to small groups of artists who distinguished themselves as landscape painters, Abstract Classicists, practitioners of Finish Fetish, members of Ferus Gallery’s stable or leaders of the Light and Space movement. Art schools proliferated and studio space was cheap, but MOCA raised the city’s profile as a major center of contemporary art. As Durham found his way, he won the support of Josine Ianco Starrels, the legendary director of the Municipal Art Gallery; Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and gallery owner Karl Bornstein. Since 1980, when Durham’s work first went on public view, it has appeared in 52 solo exhibitions and 160 group shows in museums and galleries around the world. Now based in Seattle, he continues to explore a path that has taken him from representation to a distinctive form of reductive abstraction that thrives on the force of nature and human experience.

Suzanne Muchnic 2024