Brady Haston is a native of Spencer, Tennessee and currently teaches printmaking at Watkins College of Art and Design. Brady earned a B.F.A from Middle Tennessee State University in 1992 and during 1991 he also attended the University of Georgia’s Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy. After his undergraduate studies he then attended Montana State University (Bozeman) and was awarded a M.F.A in 1997. Following graduate school, Brady spent the next eight years in Chicago teaching at Columbia College before moving back to Nashville. His shows of note include Paintings and Sketchbooks at the Cheekwood Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Printmaking Society National Exhibition in 2003, The Portrait, An Investigation of the Self at Camberwell College of Art in London, England in 2003, Bacchanal at the Appalachian Center for Crafts in 2004, Art Chicago in 2006, Intersection at the Contemporary Artist Workshop in Chicago during 2006, Abstract Painting in Tennessee at the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville in the summer of 2008, and Superstruct at PLUG Projects in Kansas City in 2012. Brady is also the recipient of the 2016 Tennessee Arts Commission for painting and a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Brady Haston is represented by Zeitgeist Gallery of Nashville.

My recent work explores the urban landscape and the intrusion of nature into these particular spaces. Specifically, the area surrounding Nashville’s Dickerson Pike and its sprawl provides the visual fodder that informs and inspires the vocabulary of my recent work. Industrial forms colliding with architectural details and encroaching nature combine to create a dynamic environmental panorama. This visual mix enters my work on both a conscious and subconscious level providing an endless source of shapes and colors to compose with and manipulate. At times, the resulting abstractions mirror this process of flux better than a purely representational depiction. This subject matter attracts me since so much of my time is spent passing through these similar spaces and I feel that I am surrounded by an endless American city that offers the same view no matter how far I travel.

My intention as an artist is to describe and capture this particular area of Nashville during the early twenty-first century. By using the work to record and share these transient observations of an urban space in flux I labor to preserve and create a visual experience for the viewer that relates to their daily experience of navigating through their routine. This work attempts to capture the intangible poetry of a place that is caught through both studied and casual observation.

Philosophically, my work has been influenced by the architect Rem Koolhaus’ writings concerning the use and misuse of public space and Gabriel Orozco’s conceptual practices that explore the areas where the city ends and the organic world begins. These in between areas create dynamic areas that hint at many possibilities. Painting and drawing allow me to explore these concepts and share experiences with a wider audience with the hopes of creating a dialogue that is both contemporary and a continuation of traditional painting practices.