David Bradley "Enchanted Mesa" Signed Limited Edition Lithograph Unframed

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Limited edition lithograph art print of a desert mesa by David Bradley. Edition size of 100. Hand signed, titled and … Read more Limited edition lithograph art print of a desert mesa by David Bradley. Edition size of 100. Hand signed, titled and numbered by the artist in pencil. Circa early to mid 1980s. Comes with certificate of authenticity. Make an offer!

DAVID BRADLEY

David Bradley was born in 1954. He attended several educational institutions including the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Widely known for his oil and acrylic narrative folk art, Bradley often uses cultural icons in a style simultaneously vibrant and whimsical, playful and wry. The winner of numerous awards, including the "Santa Fe Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts", Bradley's work is in the permanent collections of several museums and centers across the United States.

"What has been called my narrative folk style allows me to tell complex stories, sometimes with complex iconography or socio-political content," Bradley said.

The disarming humor comes naturally "when you're from a subculture that is slightly askew."

At age 5, Bradley and his brothers and sisters were taken from their parents by a private welfare agency. "It's complicated," he said of his childhood. He counts nine parents - birth parents plus his foster and adoptive parents and, later, step-parents. The turnover "made me very independent at a very young age."

He graduated from Remer High School, where he was Indian Student Club president, while living and working near Leech Lake Reservation. Before the travel bug bit him, he attended the College of St. Thomas (now University of St. Thomas). In Tucson he studied at the University of Arizona, leaving to join the Peace Corps.

"My travels in the Peace Corps changed my life," he said. "In Guatemala I lived with a Mayan Indian family, terribly poor but with great strength and integrity." His early independence contributed to his survival under the tough living conditions. Of the volunteers in his first group, he was the only one of 12 to complete the term.

Bradley also served in the Dominican Republic on the Haitian border. The colors, painters and people made a lasting impression. His early work reflects his Chippewa heritage and the folk imagery he saw in Central America.

While in the Peace Corps, he began corresponding with his birth mother. On his first break, he was reunited with her - and many of his "six-and-a-half siblings," which includes a half-sister - in Minnesota.

"We picked right up where we left off," he said of the 16-year separation from his mother. His birth parents had divorced and remarried; three of those four parents were White Earth Chippewa.

Following his Peace Corps service, he enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. He lived on the Navajo Reservation during the summer and many weekends and holidays. "I was so free in the world," he said about his independence at IAIA. "Many of the kids came from isolated communities and couldn't take the culture shock; many of them quit school and went home."

In 1979, at age 25, he received one of his most treasured honors - the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe's College "Student of the Year Academic Award."

Widely known for his oil and acrylic paintings, Bradley acknowledges the influence of many artists, including Diego Rivera, Fernando Boltero, Henri Rousseau, Robert Rauschenburg, and Midwestern regionalists Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton.

His work in collage "appeases a different part of me," Bradley said. He's done a lot of sculpture, some printing, ceramics and jewelry. He loves abstract work and has dabbled in conceptual art.

If much of his art appears political, that's because it is. "By definition, by birth, Indians are political beings," he said. "That's our condition, our lot in life.

"In the art world, I consider myself an at-large representative and advocate of the Chippewa people and American Indians in general. It is a responsibility which I do not take lightly."

Some of his one-man exhibitions include: 1981-84, Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; 1982, Guest Artist Seminar and Show, Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota; 1980, Judith Stern Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota; 1980, institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; 1979, "Sculpture and Painting," IAIA, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Some selected group exhibitions include: "Contemporary Native American Art," Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Innovations: "New Expressions in Native American Painting," National Invitational Exhibit, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; "Visions of the Earth," Native American Rights Fund Benefit, Boulder, Colorado; Mel Pfaelzer Collection of Northern Illinois University at the Lobby Gallery, Illinois Bell Company, Chicago, Illinois; 2nd Annual Invitational "Wild West Show," Alberta College of Art Gallery, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; "Eight Native Minnesota Artists," Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and "Nptive American Pictorial Traditions," Aspen Institute, Crestone, Colorado. See less