Despite his spiritual and environmentalist worldviews, Brad Stroman is hardly a didactic painter; in fact, what makes his paintings so powerful is the sheer silence of them. A feather suspended in a halo of light appears as a visual whisper. An oak leaf hangs upside down from a piece of barbed wire. The overall impression is one of tranquillity.
“Western aesthetic would say that beauty can be found in a perfect bloom or a perfect landscape,” says the Western North Carolina painter. “Eastern aesthetic sees beauty in things that are just becoming or just ending.”
This acknowledgement of the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete is the underlying tenet of wabi-sabi, a Japanese Zen Buddhist philosophy centered on the idea that everything is transient. It is also the basis of Stroman’s contemporary realist paintings, which have graced gallery walls and museums in artsy cities throughout the country.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Stroman moved to Black Mountain in 2008. He currently works out of a studio in the newly renovated Pink Dog Creative building in Asheville’s River Arts District. A high-school art teacher and commercial artist for most of his life, Stroman made the switch to visual artist and self-proclaimed “painter of wabi-sabi” 10 years ago.
“I discovered Zen Buddhism and had a spiritual epiphany when I went to Sedona, Arizona, towards the end of the ‘90s,” says Stroman. “I knew at that point I needed to break from the commercial work. I wanted to do something with my talent that zeroed in on something I really felt strong about, and that’s nature and the fragile relationship we have with it.”
That’s when Stroman began developing a technique utilizing his proficiency at trompe l’oeil — a method of painting that involves extreme realism. Using objects that he sets up in his studio as reference, Stroman renders his subject matter with such detail that his paintings are often mistaken for collage at first glance. A leaf actually looks like it’s been pinned to the canvas; a rusted barbed wire appears so real one might be afraid to touch it. This is what draws the viewer closer for a second look.
“People make a connection with my work because they’re tired of seeing art that has that perfect flower or that perfect landscape,” says Stroman. “I deliberately put leaves in my paintings that have insect holes in them, or feathers where sections have been torn away.”
The man-made elements serve their own purpose. “Without being overly forceful, I initially incorporated those elements because I wanted to symbolize what we are doing to nature,” says Stroman. “Lately I’ve been allowing the objects to float freer. I think that has to do with the fact that nature is on its own course. It doesn’t matter what we do to it — it’s going to survive. I guess it’s a more optimistic view that I’ve developed.”
Stroman begins each painting by slathering coats of gesso on to masonite boards. A pallet knife creates texture, or sometimes even a nail, which he uses to physically scratch into the primer. Next he applies layers of acrylic paint to achieve the warm visual textures of his surfaces, and begins to denote them as something specific. “That irregular surface is becoming a crumbled wall, or peeling plaster, or peeling paint. I’m trying to get a man-made surface of something that appears to be deteriorating.”
For Stroman, this step of his process is a subconscious aspect that allows for a looser, less controlled approach. “Sometimes I get just as excited about doing the backgrounds as I do the subjects,” he says.
With the under layer of the work established, Stroman begins delineating his composition. A circle appears in every painting — sometimes barely recognizable, and always broken. “The circle is the oldest symbol known to man,” says the artist. “In indigenous cultures, specifically, Native American cultures, the circle stands for unity and harmony. I include it because we may not have that harmony with nature. There’s never going to be a complete circle in any of my paintings.”
In the end, the silence of Stroman’s paintings is what speaks loudest. “I just want to pick up on the beauty of nature through the mundane. I want people to be able to slow down and have that little peace, in the rush of their days, that they can contemplate.”
Visit www.bradstroman.com to learn more about Brad Stroman.