California

Robert Brady's unique style combines the power and simplicity of tribal art with the sophistication of a master of figural abstraction. Over the last twenty-five years, he has created a succession of forms that are as inventive as they are astonishingly varied, including everything from traditional hand-built clay vessels to carved wooden insect-angels; from hilarious, terrifying, bug-eyed masks, to featureless totemic figures. Whether made from wood or clay, Brady's archetypal, other-worldly figures and forms communicate the inexespresible. They do so by speaking to us in a language of emotion and intuition.

As an undergraduate at the California College of Arts and Crafts, he received a thorough education in the traditional skills required to master his chosen medium. Later though, for his master's degree, Brady decided to go to a very different kind of institution. At UC Davis (then infamous as a hotbed of ceramic iconoclasm), Brady was exposed to California Funk in all its glory; the teachings and ideas of Robert Arneson, William Wiley, Manuel Neri and Roy De Forest. Gradually Brady began to investigate clay's more sculptural possibilities.

In 1987, Brady began working in wood. In a way, this new medium has offered him a chance to regain what Suzuki Roshi once characterized as "beginner's mind". In this state, an absence of prior experience allows a kind of perfect freshness and clarity of attention, as well as an extraordinary purity of connection with the imagination. In recent years Brady has turned his attention back to clay, making not only figures but functional, wheel thrown vessels as well.
–MARIA PORGES, 1996 (Excerpted from Robert Brady)

Selected Collections:
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum, Washington, DC
San Fransisco Fine Arts Museum, De Young, San Fransisco, CA
Arkansas Museum of Art, Little Rock, AR
San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art, San Fransisco, CA
Mint Museum of Art, NC
Derosa Preserve: Art and Nature, Napa, CA
Stedelijik Museum, Amsterdam, Holland
Utah Museum of Art, Salt Lake City, UT
American Telegraph and Telephone, NY
Lannan Foundation, West Palm Beach, FL
First National Bank of Chicago, IL
Oakland Museum, CA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA
North Dakota Museum of Art
Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA