Mark Bradford Essay

Mark Bradford is an artist who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1961. He received the BFA and the MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Mark is an artist who uses materials found on the street and transforms it to wall-size collages. He’s basically a recycler who makes art out of the trash or items that people that throw out into the garbage. Mark’s background is seen as a third generation merchant there as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the twentieth century. Due to this background you see Mark’s art as drawings from the diverse cultural and geographic makeup of his southern Californian community. According to Art21 Mark also makes videos and this is what they talk about is,” Bradford’s videos and map-like, multilayered paper collages refer not only to the organization of streets and buildings in downtown Los Angeles, but also to images of crowds, ranging from civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s to contemporary protests concerning immigration issues.” This shows what type of artist

He likes to work in canvasses using almost anything, he likes to incorporate everyday life into his work. His work consists of remnants of found posters and billboards, graffiti stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In one of his works in 2003 “The Devil Beating his Wife” he uses Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed. In 2009 on his work the “Kryptonite” Using collage and paint on paper, Mark Bradford’s Kryptonite possesses an organic quality in its grid-like composition. Mark Bradford really has the skills to use any material he chooses and transform it to what he wants and it begins to tell a story. He has a very unique way of telling his stories to