Friday, November 14, 2003
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Friday, November 14, 2003 |
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Peachtree City resident makes splash in art scene By MICHAEL BOYLAN Brad Allen needs to create. What he describes as “an addiction to art” has fueled an incredibly productive and successful period in his young career as an artist. Allen is relatively new to the art scene, but he is making his voice heard. This weekend, local residents get a chance to view some of his work at a gallery show at Coral Gables International Art Center on Roswell Road. Allen grew up in Virginia on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. He attended Radford, where he got his undergraduate degree in psychology and Austin Peay, where he got his masters in industrial organizational psychology. His roommates in college were art majors, but Allen only helped out on a few murals with them and never really gave art much thought. That changed after he moved down to Peachtree City in 2000. Allen was working with businesses, coaching them on organizational development and management. One weekend he participated in a Hands On Atlanta project painting murals in elementary school cafeterias and something clicked. “I got hooked and I’ve been painting every day since,” said Allen, who estimates he has created over 350 pieces in the three years since the day he painted the murals. Allen typically works on large scale canvasses, usually in the 6’x7’ neighborhood. After filling the house with work that he describes as abstract expressionism, his fiancee’, Tanya, asked what he planned to do with all of these paintings, especially since more were being created seemingly every day. Allen sent out some e-mails to a number of galleries and got a response from a gallery in the Soho area of New York City. “It was kind of mind-blowing to have my first exhibition in a New York gallery,” said Allen, who was very pleased with the response, despite not making a sale. “I got some good press in a local art magazine there and it was a packed house.” From that exhibition, Allen got picked up by Coral Gables, which has galleries in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Hilton Head and Miami. He will exhibit his work in these galleries throughout the next year. Allen still uses his psychology degrees as he consults on the side to pay the bills, but he is hoping that his art career will earn him enough money to break even. He estimates that there are some weeks when he spends $400 on art supplies. He is a very grounded artist with clear visions of what he wants to relay to the viewer. For Allen, he sees his work as a piece of his soul for people to judge. After it is finished, he is no longer involved and it is between the picture and the person viewing it. He is also starting to work in color field painting and painting voids, which allow people to see whatever they see in the painting. The results are often different from viewer to viewer and that pleases Allen, who feels that pop art and the media have pushed fine art to the side. Allen also is trying to bring a regional awareness to fine art being created in the Southeast. He enjoys working in Fayette County because it is a quiet and a good place for art to be noticed. “A lot of good work is created around here every day by local artists,” said Allen. Allen is looking forward to exhibiting his work this weekend in the Atlanta area and sees it as one of the rewards of his hard work. “Being an artist is a hard life. There is a lot of solitude,” said Allen. “It’s a lot harder than being a psychologist.” The exhibition will take place on Saturday from 7-9 p.m. For more information, phone the Coral Gables International Art Center at 404-497-9955 or visit www.gablesart.com.
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