Joe Bradley Quotes

A good painting has to do about 12 things at once.

I can only think of a handful of artists that can make a funny painting or a funny sculpture without it feeling coined in someway.

I think that painting relates very neatly to inner travel and the exploration of inner worlds. With painting, I always get the impression that you're sort of entering into a shared space.

You have the 20th century wrapping up and everything is moving at this breakneck speed? And then, painting is still walking. It's just a very human activity that takes time.

I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

There are different kinds of concentration required to make a painting, different kinds of being present.

I think you do kind of slip into a trance when you look at a painting. At least I do.

There's something retro about the pop culture references in the paintings, so I'd imagine it's not as much a pop culture reference as a pop art reference.

I suppose some people find their voice later than others, but it's interesting to look back at really early work to see that there's some kernel or a Rosetta Stone, in a way.

People weep at music all the time, because music gives form to some abstract level of integration.

I've always liked the fact that galleries are free to visit in New York.

I don't really get excited about good things happening to me.

I'm also interested in something that can happen later in life. In midstream, you can suddenly take what looks like a detour; I'm sure I've taken many detours.

I'm not a planner. I should be more articulate about what the imagery means, but I don't have a good reason for it; it's just there.

I love looking at sculpture, but there's some sort of spell that's broken with it.

I think that time moves slower in painting. And maybe that accounts for a lot of the anxiety around painting in the last 40 or 50 years.

I remember looking at books when I was in high school, but I don't think I really stood in front of a genuine painting or sculpture until I was out of high school.

I'm not interested in popular culture, particularly. I'm not against it, I'm not avoiding it, but I'm not interested in it as a force in life.

Money issue looms so large in art now. And it has absolutely nothing to do with art.

I always like being surprised and sort of caught off guard by other people's work. So it doesn't cause me any anxiety to explore different avenues.

There's art that I think is pretty silly, but it doesn't get under my skin like it used to.

I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

The era of television in which I grew up was much simpler than now. Its conventions were quite transparent and fun to think about. Who could ever remember the plot of those shows?

Painting has this ability to send the viewer [backward], but it's also this physical object in the room with you. It's always knocking you back into the present moment, which I find very pleasurable.

It's a funny semantic turn - when someone paints a landscape, no one says they "borrowed" it, only that they painted it.

Paintings exist in the present tense, yet somehow, because of how it's structured, it can move backwards through time as well.

Technology's always changing. There was a time where oil painting was a new technology. That changed painting.

I think painting has that unique potential to project opposing viewpoints.