Artist Statement
Artist Statement
My works begin with visual discovery in various urban environments that I’ve explored throughout areas of the United States and Europe.
I find inspiration in the surface markings found on sidewalks, facades of old and new buildings, dumpsters, doorways and loading docks, along with pavement, roadways, railroad crossings, and pedestrian crossings. These all provide the material that becomes the “building blocks” for expressing shape, pattern, texture and color of the urban landscape. With the roadways and crosswalks series I continue to explore the importance of “place” on my vision for creating form. As I explore the possibilities of creating images from these surfaces and markings, I hope to challenge the viewer to find pictorial unity within the various contrasts and tensions that prevail throughout the environments that we live in and experience every day. The spaces we see and live in are archetypal. Through my paintings, I explore and use architectural shapes that play against surfaces and active brush work, influenced by a variety of processes and techniques used to apply color to canvas. Hard edges play against brushed and scraped surfaces and the physical act of painting plays against more controlled painted line and hard edge.
With my new series, "Another Point of View", I continue to be inspiried by what I see around me. I'm interested in expressing foot ware, pose, and dress of individuals that I discover at various events. Once that I have a subject that I think can be used for a painting, I crop and design the composition to fit a small format. Color is often changed and space is often expressed with added lines and textures.
“In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.”
Richard Diebenkorn
“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.”
Henri Matisse
Brad Nuorala
Brad Nuorala is an artist who lives in Tucson, AZ.