Peter Bradley has painted every day for the last five decades. Bradley’s paintings retain his gestures and methods—the lightness of misted clouds of pigment, the slippery tactility of acrylic gel paint poured in waves, and the sonic prompts that underpin each of his paintings. With every encounter between Bradley and the canvas, he deploys a series of variables to lead him to a place he has not been before.1 These variables are as much a part of Bradley’s work as the pigmented and textured compositions for which he has gained recognition. In addition to his signature use of color and form, Bradley’s work can be read through distance, density, and sound. These entry points reveal the sensorial register of Bradley’s work, the sensations that begin with Bradley and continue through the viewer, mediated by his paintings. 

An early shift in methodology was pivotal to Bradley’s evolving experimentations. Bradley began using a spray gun in the 1960s to increase the speed of applying acrylic gel paint to the canvas and eliminate the “difficulty [of] getting paint out of the jar and onto the canvas.”2 In addition to efficiency, the driving force behind Bradley’s decision to abandon paintbrushes was the artist’s desire to reduce predictability in the painting process. Despite his daily diligence and his methodical approach to his practice, mastery over the medium is antithetical to Bradley’s work. Instead, the artist continually seeks out the unknown through his ever-shifting relationship to the canvas. He intentionally pushes the boundaries of his expertise by challenging any sense of familiarity. The spray gun technology physically distanced Bradley from the canvas and introduced chance into the equation, allowing him to be both actor and spectator in the process of creation. Bradley’s relationship to the canvas became an open-ended prompt. In his own words, the spray gun “killed my biggest enemy: my right hand. This process did away with the tremendous indulgence to create something to which I already knew the answer.”3 

The physical distance heightened the importance of speed and force as vehicles for the paint to reach the canvas. The resulting interactions between the paint and canvas give clues as to the artist’s position in the studio and the catalyzing actions. In Oblivious Venus (1974), an explosion begins at the bottom of the canvas and spreads upward. Skittering wisps of green-brown paint skim the surface with decreasing intervals between the droplets. The negative space gives these marks levity and buoyancy, suspending them above the dark layers of the work. These marks are evidence of flight; paint flung from a distance. Although the droplets are a fraction of the size and weight of the brightly colored impasto shapes swiped into the top and bottom third of the work, they capture and retain the viewer’s attention with their sense of arrested motion. The dynamism provides a balancing counterweight to the vivid turquoise, orange, and acid-green carvings, heavily applied directly to the canvas in mountainous swaths of paint. Peeking from the edges of these heavy swipes is a luminescent blue, a hint as to the earlier layers of the painting. In Chinese Snowball II (1972), the artist approaches the canvas, minimizing distance in favor of force. He tosses the layers of paint from up close, evidenced by the web of sharp splatters radiating outward from the heavy streak of white dominating the composition. The paint depicts the moment of its impact with the canvas by leaving sharp striations in its wake. Finally, Bradley completely closes the distance between his body and the canvas by manipulating the paint directly. He wipes the white paint, leaving streaky pathways that double back and bisect themselves. The finely misted layers beneath the white paint are undisturbed by the direct manipulation, suggesting that Bradley first sprayed the canvas at a distance, then allowed the layers to dry before upending the composition by dropping and smearing the final layer onto the canvas. The artist deliberately plays with proximity to achieve a sense of dynamism in his mark- making, from direct interactions with the canvas to splashes at close range and the subtle flicks and tosses from across the room. Likewise, the paintings morph when viewed from varying vantage points. These marks retain the sensations and tactility of his movements: “It didn’t get there with a brush … it got there from color coming a long way off. It’s the only way it could’ve gotten there.”4 The shades and shapes hold and convey the nature of their impact—as Bradley explains, it isn’t simply a color, but rather a color fused with force and velocity.

Bradley’s use of density acts as a visual guide—a pendulum that shifts the weight of the painting. In some of his strongest works, Bradley manipulates the way light refracts on the canvas by building layers of finely misted sheer color. Works such as Koos (1973) and Salmon Spray (1972) transform with proximity and lighting. These paintings resist understanding in one glance, presenting “color not as stationary but as a variegating visual field.”5 In these works, the ground is dissolved, and the multitude of specks cannot be isolated or viewed in a vacuum. Koos is awash with an ethereal, milky blue. The incandescent quality of the primary color becomes the focal point as opposed to any single mark. Bradley’s delight in the extraordinary shade is palpable, at the top left and right side of the canvas he allows the blue to stand alone, completely covering the layers beneath. Other areas are more lightly dappled, allowing glimpses of complementary shades of lilac and dark blue. The varied concentrations of mist cause the impression of shimmering, imbuing the work with an airy sense of movement. From afar, Salmon Spray reads as a wash of color, subtly shifting from across a spectrum of rose, amber, and orange with punctuations of umber. Occasionally, the undulating shades are interrupted by stark, linear shifts in tone, giving the impression of a shadow or an obstruction. In this work, Bradley stretches the capabilities of this salmon hue to its full extent, exploring the corners of its definitions, from tinges of orange and coral to dense undertones of purple-tinted mauve. The overall impression is lush and slippery; it is an exercise in loud subtlety. The work demonstrates restraint, stopping just shy of crossing the line the artist has drawn in the sand. “Less is more. The less color you have, the more color you have.”6 These works are vaporous matrixes of light and color that reflect the subtle touch of Bradley’s misted application.

These densely sprayed canvases retain the dynamism of the conditions of their creation. These paintings are choruses, thousands of points of contact working in tandem to create the impression of harmony as opposed to uniformity. As the viewer’s position changes, the clouds of color shape-shift, splitting into hundreds of thousands of distinct instances. In Hemming (1971), the heavy droplets overlaid across the painting act as spatial reference points. The paint is globbed onto the canvas, released with a heavy hand from overhead, though not high enough to splatter. Cream-colored marks are splayed with vanishing tails, bouncing along the surface to an eventual stop. These were lightly flicked at an angle, pebbles across the surface of a pond. Dots of indigo and mustard ebb into and out of view against the equally dynamic backdrop. A spray of teal appears stark and acrid against the orange blooming backdrop of the upper left quadrant, then subtle and velvety against the cloud of purples underlaying the lower left quadrant. As is often the case in Bradley’s work, the colors morph against one another in this environment, allowing the “mutual definition of multiple colors.”7 Bradley allows colors to contrast and cohere with a spectrum of environments, defining the colors through varied relationships as opposed to letting them stand alone, as in Koos. Bradley’s fluctuations between fine mists and compressed spills, as well as his dexterity with varying viscosities, yield canvases with dynamism and dimensionality.

A constant soundtrack is a nonnegotiable part of Bradley’s artistic process: “I have to have music, otherwise I can’t paint.”8 Audible in his studio are jazz legends, several of whom he counts as friends: Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, and Sarah Vaughan, among many others. Bradley favors the bebop era, when jazz was beginning to dissolve, creating “an abstract relationship between melody and figures.”9 The aural resonances of these ever-present soundtracks can be found on Bradley’s canvases. “All sound constitutes more than what we hear. It is an inherently embodied modality constituted by vibration and contact.”10 One can follow the thread of inspiration from the soundtrack, through Bradley, and onto the canvas. The artist moves with—and is moved by—the music, transmuting the sounds into color: “I can almost dance with color instead of physically.”11 Bradley’s blurring of the distinctions between senses allows him to experience color physically and transmit sound into his paintings. He rejects the dominance of any one sense in favor of an intermingled and simultaneous, “sociality of the senses.”12 There is a “transformative proximity” between the artwork and the soundtrack, which is to say the presence of music pushes the visuals to be “consistent with the nature of the music.”13 Bradley follows the sparks of inspiration found in music to polychromatic ends. These phonic elements are embedded in the work; these paintings can be heard and felt.

According to the artist, “every sound has a color … different instruments have a different color spectrum.”14 He goes on to explain that the bass is blue, black, or tan while the trumpet can be yellow, white, or silver.15 Elysian Fields (1975) is a bass solo, a rich arrangement of deep blues, indigos, blacks, and tans—with a single swath of yellow cutting through the weighty noise. The painting radiates outward from the upper left corner, the darkest portion of the canvas. If, according to Bradley, the rhythm section brings everything forward to a closer plane, then the bass is the rich indigo thrumming in the background, the foundation on which the rest of the painting is built.15 The brass section, an extremely fine misted overlay of tan, beige, and light blue, lifts the painting, providing texture and contrast to the darker colors without overwhelming the subtlety of the reserved color palette. Given that Bradley can “turn music into color,” these works bring to mind the big bands of Gil Evans and Art Blakey, with whom he toured.17 In Port Royale (1973), the overall effect is polyphonic, with different elements taking a moment to shine on the canvas: grounding deep purples and greens lie beneath louder, blaring sprays of blues, yellows, and oranges. All are unified by staccato bursts of deep red covering the canvas. The relationship between the colors is that of a bassist creating a structure for the brass section to weave through and a percussionist to bring it all to life. The horizontal painting Nix Olympia (1973) recalls the rich vibrato of Sarah Vaughan, cascading down the canvas in watery rivulets of peach and a deep velvety purple reflective of her unparalleled vocal range. Like Vaughan, the painting traverses registers with ease, the multitude of layers swelling and ebbing in harmony. As if in an orchestra, the colors define themselves against one another, as opposed to in a vacuum, exploring the complement or friction between various hues. In Bradley’s own words, “If I can get the color to go with the music I’m listening to in my interpretation then I think I have a successful painting.”18

In keeping with his decades-long practice of inspiring unpredictability within himself and his artworks, the artist delights in the variables he cannot control—including the viewer. Through his paintings, we understand his gestures and the environments he created both in his studio and in his artworks. By his own admittance, Bradley experiences these artworks fully: he hears yellow, feels the bass in indigo, and makes color dance. To perceive the full spectrum of Bradley’s work, one must use all one’s senses. In recent years, Bradley has begun to drag the canvases outdoors, hauling them over uneven ground and allowing sun, rain, and wind to play a role in the ultimate finished product. Many artists attempt to close the gap between the image and their intent, giving form to an idea. Bradley does the opposite; he leans into the unknown with equal parts curiosity and humility, allowing the elements to unveil themselves. In his process, he controls only the most important variables: the paint and the canvas. He paints notions, color, light, fleeting sensations, and sound. Bradley invites chance into his works, acting as an accomplice and enabler to the paint. He pushes the boundaries of what it means to apply paint to a canvas on a daily basis, never stagnating in his pursuit of new results. If one views these works as a prompt, an invitation to go further, the painting is only the beginning of the experience.

“I’m trying to get the shape of you. I’m trying to get the shape of what I’m looking at through this window. I’m trying to get the shape of music, I’m trying to get the shape of love.”19

Notes

1. “Peter Bradley: A Life in Paint,” interview conducted by Andrianna Campbell and Shanna Farrell, March 25, 2019, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, under the auspices of the J. Paul Getty Trust, 216.
2. “Oral History Project: Peter Bradley Interviewed by Steve Cannon, Quincy Troupe & Cannon Hersey,” Bomb Magazine, January 17, 2017, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/peter-bradley-1/.
3. Simone Swan, “Conversation with Peter Bradley, Curator of The De Luxe Show,” in The De Luxe Show (Houston: Menil Foundation, 1971).
4. “Peter Bradley: A Life in Paint,” 52.
5. Darby English, 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 219.
6. “Peter Bradley: A Life in Paint,” 123.
7. Ibid., 206.
8. WITH PETER BRADLEY, a documentary by Alex Rappoport, 2022. 
9. “Arthur Jafa and Greg Tate in Conversation,” in Emmanuel Iduma et al., Ming Smith (New York: Aperture, 2020), 220.
10. Tina Campt, Listening to Images (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 7.
11. WITH PETER BRADLEY, 2022. 
12. “Fred Moten with Jarrett Earnest,” Brooklyn Rail, November 2017, https://brooklynrail.org/2017/11/art/FRED-MOTEN-with-Jarrett-Earnest.
13. “Arthur Jafa and Greg Tate in Conversation,” 219.
14. WITH PETER BRADLEY, 2022. 
15. WITH PETER BRADLEY, 2022. 
16. WITH PETER BRADLEY, 2022. 
17. “Peter Bradley: A Life in Paint,” 217.
18. WITH PETER BRADLEY, 2022. 
19. “Oral History Project.”