VIRGINIA BRADLEY: Corallium Series Virtual Exhibition

Virginia Bradley: Corallium Series

By Jen Dragon

Virginia Bradley abstracts from nature with the reactive qualities of her materials as her guide. Her luminous paintings are informed by natural phenomena as well as geological and oceanographic formations. Bradley’s approach to painting is in the role of an alchemist exploring the random chemical reactions between pigments and solvents as she creates works that evoke air, water, and atmospheric changes. With no discernable brushwork and occasional mark-making, Virginia Bradley’s paintings seem composed of pure light and color and the turbulent textures of her colors are at once instantaneous and timeless. 

In the Corallium Series, Virginia Bradley meditates on the rebirth of the coral reefs of Puerto Rico as she creates non-objective paintings that teem with life. Color is the driving element in the artworks. Painted on archival film that allows the pigments to skim the surface without being absorbed, Bradley avoids the natural absorption offered by traditional paper substrates. Luminous ultramarine and indigo blues, turquoise, Veronese greens, Paynes grays, cobalt yellows and cadmium oranges, evoke the shifting space and colors of the marine world. Virginia Bradley’s elegant forms emerge from ethereal fogs and mists as they swirl and cascade across deceptively vast dimensions. Adding various solvents, Bradley works until the moment is just right - then she permanently sets the translucent pigments, layer by layer, by exposing the artwork to the sun’s rays. 

Improvisation is an important factor in Virginia Bradley’s paintings. She creates conditions for the chemical properties of pigments to surprise and her swift reactions to these unplanned transformations is what distinguishes her work. It is in seizing the precise moment when paint becomes other than paint, when pigment dissolves into depths that are beyond its own essence, there lies the genius of this artist and her transcendent artwork.The sheer exuberance of color washing across the ethereal skin of acetate and later baked in place by solar heat captures both the bravura and power of space and being - and Bradley’s mastery of the moment is complete.