Whether I am painting figurative or abstract forms, several concerns remain constant. I’m interested in creating a bridge between accident and control, heaviness and lightness, clarity and confusion. I feel most successful when I am able to contain two worlds in one image; most recently, to imply microscopic space and an enormous expanse simultaneously.

Several themes recur as a private narrative while I work, but are rarely explicit. They include ideas about isolation and connection, compulsiveness, the desire for a clean slate, memories of travel and landscape, the weight of history, and a sense of expectation or foreboding, among others. My impulse is to transform these preoccupations into a visual structure as a way of making sense of the world and finding beauty in it.


Jen Bradford, 2010