Awards

2016 – Leominster Art Association – Second Place Advanced Pastel

2016 – Pastel Society of New Hampshire Linda Obremski Landscape Award

2015 – Leominster Art Association – First Place Advanced Pastel

2015 – Leominster Art Association – Public Voted Most Popular Award

2015 – Pastel Society of New Hampshire Linda Obremski Landscape Award

2014 – Leominster Art Association – First Place Advanced Pastel

2013 – Leominster Art Association – First Place Advanced Pastel

2011 – Leominster Art Association – First Place Advanced Pastel , Gold Award Overall Advanced

2010 – Leominster Art Association – First Place Advanced Pastel, Silver Award Overall Advanced

1984 – Leominster Art Association – First Place Pastels

1980 – Westboro Art Association – First Place Pastel, Best in Show Award

Educational Experiences

Pastel Painting Workshop 1984 – Artist – Albert Handell, PSA

Worcester Art Museum – Oil Painting

Artist’s Statement

My passion is to capture the hidden treasures within the landscape that surround all of us which may go unnoticed in our everyday lives. While I enjoy panoramic landscapes, I am more intrigued with the intimate scenes such a woodland streams, wetlands and water features as well as woodland and meadow paths and unpaved roads meandering through the landscape. The colors and the nuance of light played out in these intimate locations is addicting and I strive to capture this in my paintings.

I also am enamored with agricultural elements such as farms and farmlands, both working and abandoned and old tractors and farm equipment and the essence of past human presence and activities. Capturing these scenes, many of which are rapidly disappearing either by neglect or development, through my artwork is my way to preserve these historic farms and a way of life fading away. Experiencing and illustrating these scenes is nostalgic to me and visiting these sites brings back childhood memories with the sounds and odors adding their own inspirations that are a part of the creative process.

The pastel medium with the multitude of intense colors allows me to capture these scenes. As an artist I am constantly in search of scenes that call to me whether in the above themes or new areas of interest such as a shoreline series I am working on at this time. — Thomas W. Bradley

Artist Profile

Thomas W. Bradley has always been involved in art sketching hot rod cars at an early age branching into painting and drawing landscapes in his teens.  Growing up in what at the time was rural central Massachusetts he was always exploring the woodlands, meadows, fields and farmlands prevalent in the area which became the primary basis of Tom’s work. Through his lifelong work in the nursery and landscape industry he is constantly astounded on a daily basis of the natural beauty that surround us, whether it’s how the morning light plays off an aging barn, meadow, water feature or the fantastic late day shadows cast by the setting sun.

Thomas early on in his career was an oil painter but became attracted to the pastel medium in his thirties. The passion for the medium was further enhanced when he attended a workshop with Albert Handel in 1984. Mr. Handel introduced those attending to sanded paper in lieu of the limited pastel surfaces available at the time.  While the earlier sanded surfaces were not archival their ability hold multiple layers of pastel assisted in creating his technique and works.

Primarily self-taught Thomas is constantly reading and studying other artists work and their techniques and methods to assist in his progression and development of work and technique. His enjoyment with the pastel medium is the intensity of the colors, the feel of holding a pastel stick in his fingers and the mark making to create what up close is abstract mark making that at a distance creates visual blending. Thomas rarely manually blends the colors which can mute and dull the colors, concentrating with the layering of pure color to achieve a finished piece.

Working primarily on U-Art 400 or Pastel Premier 320 sanded papers, these surfaces allow the use of wet medium as an underpainting whether it’s a water color underpainting or hard pastel under painting washed with alcohol.  This allows you to create a conducive light value based underpainting in the local color.  Lately he has been experimenting with acrylic ink washes in various colors as underpainting which can present an intense light value surface.

Thomas is constantly in search of scenes that inspire him to create a new series of work. Current work includes shoreline marshes and ocean venues.