Gary Brady’s work brings together elements of realism and abstraction that come from a belief that when things in our world are different, but can coexist beautifully, life’s experience is expanded.

The artist’s paintings come from a unique set of circumstances. He studied in the classical atelier tradition at the Schuler School in Baltimore, and exhibited in the academic style for 4 years. Following the failure of the New Orleans levees in 2005, Brady worked as a retouch painting specialist with a group of conservators on the abundance of damaged paintings. This experience profoundly changed his work. His brush came into contact with limitless types of paintings, and he fell in love with the diversity. Those influences revealed a desire to venture further, and strive for his paintings to reveal a more complete version of his artistic passions:

“I am using my conscious and subconscious represented by the real and the abstract elements to make the paintings. Sometimes they begin with a figure and let the abstraction react to it; and other paintings develop in the opposite order. By allowing both elements to merge, and even cause each other’s existence, I’m able to put more of myself in the work. There is the me that is my cognitive thought, and the other me that is felt without it. If I eliminated one of those parts then I would only make half a painting. Their interplay creates a unique energy referring to our modern world of image bombardment, and while we focus on one, we are aware of many others in our periphery. That is today’s culture.”

In addition to being an accomplished portrait painter He has exhibited at The Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Mobile, AL, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, Gallery Orange in New Orleans, The Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, AL, The Atlanta Art Gallery in Atlanta The Prince Royal Gallery in Alexandria, VA, The Mill in Millwood, VA, The Lyons Share Gallery and ESAC in Fairhope, Alabama, as well as, the Schuler School of Art in Baltimore. Brady’s work has been included in the Southeast Juried Exhibition, The Saltline Biennial, and many other group exhibitions.