Works °9 — CHARLES BRADY

essay by Charles Brady; intro by Desmond MacAvock

ISBN 978 0946641 307     32 pages (paperback)     20x15cm     18 illus

Charlie Brady was an American painter who made Ireland in home in 1956. Much influenced by the New York Abstract Expressionists, over time he found a more subtle and assured style of his own, one that became distinctively his and ranked him as one of Ireland’s best-loved painters.

EXTRACTS

"When Charles Brady first came to Ireland, he was much influenced by the creative attitudes of the New York Abstract Expressionists with whom he had consorted and caroused when they were evolving their style. This was a very powerful influence on a young painter. The first paintings he did in Ireland all reflected this influence, for while they were of the Irish landscape, this was interpreted very freely, very broadly, and wholly expressionistic in feeling. All were non-specific in place, completely non-topographical, but, in spite of their small size and immediacy of touch, gave the painter’s personal experience of this new landscape using the manner he had brought with him.
          At the time, in the 50s and early 60s, these gave a view of this subject that was refreshingly different from all the Paul Henry derivatives which still held sway. However, for all his use and indeed mastery of this manner, it did not really suit his temperament or the eventual realisation of his personal objectives in painting. He had left the glare, brashness, the almost frenetic atmosphere of New York for what Ireland could provide in the way of tranquillity and reflection. This effective abandonment of his native background was to become the dominating feature of his work, the experience of Ireland in all its reduced scale, its intimacies, was to become his subject, and he was to become essentially a painter of Ireland."

— from the introduction by Desmond MacAvock

"In the early summer of 1948, I climbed the steps of the Art Students League at 215 West 57th Street in New York City. Here I began my road to become a painter. I had been in the US Navy at the end of the Second World War, and when I was discharged, I worked in a series of mundane jobs. I decided one day to go to the City College and take a night-time drawing class. Now, my drawings were terrible but I was advised to think a bit more seriously. I was accepted in a school of fashion illustration. I was very cautious because I didn’t see what I could actually ever achieve. But while there, I was advised to go to the Art Students League. I tried to join a three-year course that more of less guaranteed you were going to be an artist. But it was overbooked and so I chose a a morning class in drawing and composition given by John Groth who had been a war correspondent in the Second World War. He was a pen-and-ink illustrator and also worked in watercolours. Most of the men in the class were a few years older than I was. They’d all been in the War and they were trying to get portfolios together to approach ad agencies or book publishers. When Mr Groth came in the first day, he looked at my drawings and I said, — ‘Look Sir, would you please tell me is it worth my while staying here. Am I just fooling myself and my family and everybody else?’ — ‘Yea kid,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you. The drawings aren’t very good. But if you work at it, the drawings have to improve. Kid, I’ll tell you. You have mood and I can’t teach mood and that’s power.’ — ‘Well, is it worth my while sir?’ And he replied, — ‘Kid, I’ll tell you. You won’t make a million, but you’ll make a buck.’"

— Charlie Brady