Brad Greenwood
Brad Greenwood creates figures undergoing a transformation in paint. Mythic narratives of shape-shifters, wolf-like men and women, and human-cat forms characterize his brushy, gestural paintings. Greenwood commonly paints on wood panel, which he has said “guides my work the way paint by number books did when I was a kid; I can see the outline of a story or image in the wood grain. I can color it in slowly until the surface comes alive as a technicolor world where the art history of my past merges with my ‘contemporary’ present.”
Greenwood’s works range from uncomfortable portraits, to landscapes, to something in between. The latter can be illustrated by work such as the 2012 painting Transformations, in which a wall of framed human body part portraits has been washed in yellow paint, as other seeming parts of bodies fill the frame, creating a jumbled and disorienting image. Or, as in In bocca al lupo (in the wolf’s mouth) from 2011, in which the torso of a wolfish-looking man becomes a site for cataloguing his inhuman, disparate parts. The result is haunting, richly imagined pictures that challenge the viewer to see how paint can continue to transform.
Greenwood is the …
Brad Greenwood creates figures undergoing a transformation in paint. Mythic narratives of shape-shifters, wolf-like men and women, and human-cat forms characterize his brushy, gestural paintings. Greenwood commonly paints on wood panel, which he has said “guides my work the way paint by number books did when I was a kid; I can see the outline of a story or image in the wood grain. I can color it in slowly until the surface comes alive as a technicolor world where the art history of my past merges with my ‘contemporary’ present.”
Greenwood’s works range from uncomfortable portraits, to landscapes, to something in between. The latter can be illustrated by work such as the 2012 painting Transformations, in which a wall of framed human body part portraits has been washed in yellow paint, as other seeming parts of bodies fill the frame, creating a jumbled and disorienting image. Or, as in In bocca al lupo (in the wolf’s mouth) from 2011, in which the torso of a wolfish-looking man becomes a site for cataloguing his inhuman, disparate parts. The result is haunting, richly imagined pictures that challenge the viewer to see how paint can continue to transform.
Greenwood is the recipient of multiple painting prizes, and his work has been shown at galleries in both New York and Philadelphia.
