Brad Antifolk
Weekend Lover
Acrylic Paint outlined in Ink and covered in Resin on a gallery wrapped canvas
30 x 40 inches
2021
Brad Antifolk
Fragile Animal
Acrylic Paint outlined in Ink and covered in Resin on a gallery wrapped canvas
30 x 24 inches
2020
Brad Antifolk
Chasing the Dream
Acrylic Paint outlined in Ink and covered in Resin on a gallery wrapped canvas
12 x 16 inches
2020
Brad Antifolk
Lightning Jazz
Acrylic Paint outlined in Ink and covered in Resin on a gallery wrapped canvas
16 x 20 inches
2019
Brad Antifolk
Ain't No One Gunna Hold Me Down
Acrylic Paint outlined in Ink and covered in Resin on a gallery wrapped canvas
24 x 24 inches
2021
Brad Antifolk
On the Brink of Eruption
Acrylic Paint outlined in Ink and covered in Resin on a gallery wrapped canvas
24 x 24 inches
2020
Brad Antifolk - Artist
ARTIST STATEMENT
"As a child my earliest memories of art are not between the lines of a coloring
book, but the lines themselves. It was the lines that stuck with me. In my
art today, the focus is the dichotomy between the arbitrariness of how color is
positioned on the canvas against the carefulness of the outlines of that
color. The line takes the color and makes it pop.
There is beauty in imperfection. As a leader of people in business, I would
draw a straight line using a ruler and then freehand a straight line next to
it. I would then ask my employee which one was they preferred. Inevitably
they always said the one drawn with the ruler. Ah, but the imperfection
seen in the line drawn freehand has so much more soul and power in it. My
artwork continues to be about these small blemishes that the hand drawn line
produces. The power and the soul of the artist. Life is not always perfect,
thank goodness."
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brad Antifolk is a visual artist who currently resides and works in the
Dallas/Fort Worth metro area. His work centers around the way that outlines
change the way that colors are seen. The focus on outlines has been consistent
even in his earliest artworks from high school and beyond. He studied design
at N.C. State university and art at Appalachian State University before getting
a business degree and later a MBA from Wake Forest University. While pursuing
a career in business Brad Antifolk found different places to act as an outlet
for his creativity. Most notably he created a large and expansive website
centering around the turn of the century Antifolk scenes based in New York
City and the UK. That branched out into a small circulation magazine or "Zine"
called ANTI-UP [the magazine]. His focus nowadays is on his family and paintings.
Originally inspired by the women's march in early 2017 Brad Antifolk began to
paint again. It had been over a decade and a half since he had last picked up
a paintbrush. He started painting mostly figurative work based on whatever
was trending on twitter at the time under the name Brad Antifolk for the first
time. The works created in the "Trending Painter' series were more or less a
precursor to things to come. The outlines later associated with the artist
were present then, but the subject matter took the focus away from the lines.
At some point the series gave way to the "Anarchy of the Abstract" series. In
this series, inspired by the music that drove his old website and magazine, Brad
Antifolk began to focus on lines against colors. This was what he had
artistically been evolving towards his whole life.
Starting with the pieces like "Not Jealous of the Angels," Brad Antifolk began
taping off parts of the canvas playing with design elements and breaking the
painting into smaller sections or "windows". "Nausea" also sees the artist
play with white acrylic pen outlines. Something that rarely has shown up in
later works. By the time pieces like "Never Get to Know" or "Unpatriotic"
were created this technique of seemingly randomly applying chosen color to
canvas and then outlining any color deviation was commonplace within his work.
During this time a second companion series was started using the leftover tape
from creating windows on the canvas. This series has been primarily contained
to small 5" x 7" canvases in which the tape is applied. With larger pieces
such as "Go Man Go," Brad Antifolk has made these windows act as outlines using
negative space to the viewer who is away from the canvas. But the details of
each section show small color variation outlines to the viewer who examines the
piece up close.
Most of the pieces are named after music that has inspired the artist. The
themes that are present in some of this music include alienation, relationships
(both loving and sexual), idealism and politics. As the name Antifolk suggests
the art created is meant to not be categorized into a small space. Though
partly a reaction against what has come before, the art created is more of an
homage to artists of the past with a cynical twist.
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