Brad Terhune traces his artistic practice to a childhood spent drawing, painting, and making objects. Focusing on collage, painting, photography, and mixed media, his work often addresses political and social justice issues, but he also explores the absurdity of life and the ebb and flow of the weird and wonderful. The possibilities that arise from the juxtaposition of images manifest in works that have recognizable forms, seen in unique ways. Exhibiting regularly throughout the NY/NJ area, Brad’s work is in collections in Japan, England, France, and throughout the United States.
Statement:
I am a northern New Jersey-based artist and have been making collages since childhood. Often I am looking to create a strange, surreal world, and have been influenced by early twentieth century art movements that embraced and explored collage. The ‘Difficult Listening’ series combines my love of music with collage. Working in a 12- inch square format, the size of a vinyl record album, these works serve as reimagined record sleeves. Taking their titles from snippets of song lyrics that I find particularly poetic, meaning emerges when image and word unite, evoking both originality and nostalgia within me. Thematically, most of the images explore ideas such as beauty, loneliness, and our relationship with the natural world. Compositionally, I explore spatial relationships through the playful layering of cut pieces, moving background imagery forward, and vice versa. For the viewer, who may or may not recognize the words and phrases I have chosen, the discovery is of something entirely new.
In my painting, the exploration of abstraction forces me to consider how and why the image develops. The dialog I have with myself during the making of these images stems from a question concerning the decorative, and I actively push the composition and the materials to avoid this as much as possible. My concern lies with the surface of the painting, without the illusion of space beyond these two dimensions. Therefore, these paintings are ‘about’ exactly what you see.