Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford was the artist that I took a look at. His creativity was wonderful abstract, catching my eye piece after piece. The particular artwork that I looked at was his “When We Ride” created in 2006. The media is a mix, which was created into a collage on canvas. The canvas was at its large of 46 3/8 x 62 ? inches. This piece of artwork is located in the city of art itself; Los Angeles, California. I believe this canvas collage tells an untold story through contrast and rhythm, light and color, and texture.

As a child Mark Bradford had known his mother and grandmother to be creators. He called them creators because as a job title they were seamstresses. The ability to make things, new things at that for people was the motivation and process of making things. The contrast of the objects used on the collage is weird because he just used scraps that were lying around the house. The contrast was the placing of fabrics next to a different color and flow of the piece was in amazing. It made me think of rhythm that is somehow missing but never seems to finds its own way.

The fact he put two different pieces of fabric next to each other is another way of throwing it off and creating pattern of not being rhythmic with the rest of the picture. When throwing in the light and color of the collage you start to make a better picture and scene of what the artist is trying to communicate. I believe the bright colors are making a statement to emphasize on the major parts of the artwork. Showing the motion, makes you move your eyes along the imaginary wave. The slight tone of yellow makes me think of the sun come through the wave.

The soft light of the off white background makes me think of a light blue sky that is clear of everything. Vague colors made me stare at the picture for long periods of time so that way I could understand why he created this on in particular. I thought maybe like times when he got bored and went to the museum; he created a scene of his bus ride there. Maybe he pictures himself at a beach and what it would be like to sit and watch someone ride a wave. I can’t even imagine what the texture of this piece feels like. Smooth with rough bumpy edges going down the side.

The yellow on the canvas looks like it was painted on because it is so soft in texture and faint. The red wave looks like it would be frailly and soft. The canvas is smooth which creates this illusion that artwork is somewhat is three dimensional. Silk and cotton would be of the many fabrics on this art work. Mark Bradford used whatever was available for him to use because he used the scraps from clothes that were being made. Being blind folded and being able to rub your fingers across the piece would give the sense of what a mixture of random textures would feel like all together.

All in all, Mark Bradford did an amazing job of creating a masterpiece out of trash. I am not that creative to make any artwork out of scraps that could have been thrown away. Kudos to him and I think he should teach a class on how you can use your imagination and whatever materials you have available to use to create art. Art has many different ways of being seen, but to actually understand and appreciate it is taking it to a whole another level. Mr. Bradford showed texture, contrast and rhythm, and light and color all in one piece, yet showing many other principles of art that could be analyzed.