musetouch_issue_24

Brad Kunkle
Born in rural Pennsylvania, Brad Reuben Kunkle spent his younger years exploring and romanticizing
the beauty of the sparse countryside and the deep forests around him. From an
early age he was drawn to the worlds of Maxfield Parrish and the Pre-Raphaelites --worlds,
he says, “where a subtle, supernatural beauty seems to be hiding under the breath of women
--worlds where something beyond our natural perception is waiting to be found.”
He studied painting at Kutztown University mostly under George Sorrels, who was taught by
a pupil of the 19th century Academic painter, William Adolphe Bougereau. Filled with academic
principles, Brad felt confident in his ability, but stifled by the structure of schools and
dissatisfied with the boundaries of traditional imagery. In an effort to discover his own artistic
sensibilities, he worked as a commission-based portraitist, and began an almost decade-long
journey of continued self-instruction and independent study.
Brad was searching for an unnatural quality in his paintings, and it was ironically discovered
by reducing his processes to the elements of painting he felt came most natural to him.
His minimal palette is inspired by the grisailles of early European masters and the haunting
quality of antique photographs and daguerreotypes. “Grisaille has a mysterious quality to it,
and that mysterious quality is also at times carried into the way I will treat an object or a dress.
Sometimes I like to give just enough information for the viewer to finish the details of what they
are seeing.”
As a decorative painter in his mid twenties, he leafed entire walls in copper. He was beguiled
by the shifting, life-like nature of the surfaces, and began to incorporate gilding in his work.
This proved to fulfill the unreal quality he had been looking for to convey his moody, romantic
ideas of human nature and ritual.
“The use of gold and silver in my paintings serve two main functions --the first being symbolic.
Gold and silver serve as symbols in many ways but to begin with, they are ‘material’ symbols in
harsh contrast to the spiritual or intangible aspects of life. The shifting of the leafed skies and
wallpapers are also symbolic of the ever-changing world we live in. Furthermore, gold is the
single most controversial element in the history of mankind. It causes wars, brings death, happiness
and beauty - symbolizes love, power, greed, and religion...it’s symbolic properties are just as
malleable as it’s physical properties.
The second function of the leaf is to react directly with the viewer. As one walks across a room or
dims the lights, they are affecting the painting and the painting is affecting them. The paintings
become a living, breathing thing to me when the leaf is shifting and the oil is quiet. The art literally
becomes interactive and can give the work a supernatural quality. The use of grisaille, or an
adaptation of grisaille, against the leaf can give the sense of a very surreal space and unnatural
depth within the paintings.”
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