John W. Brady
About
John Brady
John Brady was born December 24, 1927 in Lincolnton, N.C. to Charles A. and Henrietta Killian Brady. The youngest of five children, he was raised during the Great Depression in the family hometown of Newton, N.C. By his own accounts, he apparently had an active and happy childhood, although the family struggled during the depression years of his youth. It was during this period that he first began to show an interest in art, and at least one painting from this time is still in his personal collection.
Brady studied art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in his teens, and later at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. He served in the Army Air Corps in the last year of the war, and later in the US Air Force before mustering out in 1947. After the war he studied at the Jerry Farnsworth School of Art in Sarasota. Particularly important in his training were his studies with Hilton Leech at the Amanagansett Art School, also in Sarasota, and with Umberto Romano in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Brady returned to his native North Carolina in the 1950s to paint and teach, where he married Jane Carolyn Crouch of Morganton. During these years he was part of an active community of artists which included Hilton Leech, Philip Moose, Boyce Kendrick, and Gregory Ivey. Between 1954 and 1967 he operated the John Brady School of Art and Gallery in Blowing Rock, N.C. Over the years he taught in over 50 cities throughout the Carolinas and Southern Virginia, exhibited in well over 100 one-man shows and in many other shows and galleries, and served on the boards of directors of a number of arts councils and museums. He died April 19, 1997 in Concord, N.C. after a brief illness. Brady had three children: John W. Brady, Jr., Jamie Brady Brown, who is also an artist and former art educator, and Jo Ann Brady, and he has four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. His wife Jane passed away in June of 2009.
The works reproduced here are all from the collection of his son John Brady, Jr., of Ithaca, N.Y., and most have not been shown in North Carolina in recent years. These paintings span the period of the 1970s through the 1990s, but unfortunately include none of his characteristic early work from the 1950s and 1960s. These works show some of the important influences on his painting style, including impressionism, 20th Century Japanese woodblock prints, and the later work of Ben Shahn.