Exhibition: The Beautiful Mundane

The Beautiful Mundane: Love, Life, Walking and Tangential Reality
is an exhibition of mostly new work by London-based artist Tim Bradford.
It is based around a series of brightly coloured flower pictures, part of an
ongoing series of botanic transcendental paintings that the artist began
over a decade ago when he was living in Co. Clare and time and space had
opened up in his head. What he means by the beautiful mundane is “a search for
everyday epiphanies” – he calls them “Zen Newsflashes” – an attempt at being
aware of what is in front of you. Making sacred the familiar.

Bradford’s practice is grounded in walking, with notebooks, sketchbooks or
camera, trying to focus on the reality of nature but often failing due to his ever-
humming and temperamental mind archives. He works on field notes and
sketches for a long time, until a finished painting appears in his head. He then
completes each work quickly in a state of focused spontaneity/artistic battle
frenzy, first by underpainting with acrylics, using his hands and fingers (or an old
gardening glove) in a mix of yellow and gold, then later working quickly over the
top with fingers and brushes, then and scratching away details and (sometimes)
words using an old pen knife that he found in Epping Forest.

The jumbled background foliage is symbolic of his own non-academic approach,
which owes more to South American folk art and primary school art lessons than
traditional botanic drawings. Bradford’s constant grappling with his own
perceived lack of drawing skills is part of the ongoing struggle to get down on
canvas or paper the multi-layered experience of seeing and perceiving.
Sometimes he juxtaposes the images with political slogans that energise him,
but more often it’s what he is feeling and thinking about at the moment of
recording.