Bradley Gordon- A Force of Nature

 

At first glance, they are paintings of Mississippi Delta wildlife. Each creature sits in high relief above a muted background—a turkey, a catfish, a buck. But once you walk up to the rendering, the brush strokes pull you into the vortex. Infinite cyclones of color buried in geometric shapes create the lines and definition of the subject matter. The method is a metaphor for Bradley Gordon’s life: intensity up close, softened, and defined by distance and experience.

Bradley Gordon is a child of the Delta, born September 17, 1977, in Clarksdale,
Mississippi. “I had a great childhood. My dad managed a farm kind of out near Hopson Commissary, an old cotton gin and plantation on Highway 49. I grew up on that farm,
Ellendale Planting Company. My house was literally down a dead-end gravel road in the
middle of a cotton field.”

With a brother seven years older, Bradley was often left to his own desires. It seems the
child never stopped inventing, devising, exploring. “I had friends, but they were miles
away. I was always working on something, building something.”

Bradley’s playgrounds were the woods behind his house, cotton trailers, the farm shop,
and anywhere he could make things. His artistic talent was born from his ability to imagine and build. “I don’t remember taking art in elementary school. I’m sure we had something. I think we had an art class once a week in high school. And I was into photography back then. I had a camera and would take pictures of whatever.”

Bradley’s artistic impulses gave way to a more organized approach to art. “I never had an
easel in my room at home, but I was always drawing, taking pictures, cooking up things
in my head.”

Bradley put together a portfolio to apply to college. He didn’t have access to oil paints.
Pencils or pastels and acrylics were his tools.

He smiled. “I can draw. But it’s very mechanical. I don’t look at something and render it.
I spend a lot of time measuring and getting the proportions right. Then the fun begins
with the paint.”

Bradley started college at Delta State in Cleveland, Mississippi. “I was lucky enough to
study under Sammy Britt, he said. Britt was a celebrated Mississippi artist who advanced the plein air method of painting outdoors, harnessing natural light in his landscapes and adhering to the styles of such artistic greats as Monet and Renoir.

“Delta State was fun, but it was so close to home.” Bradley transferred to Ole Miss his
sophomore year and majored in art education. “I figured I could teach because I love being around kids and working with children. I’m a big kid at heart. I was lucky enough to take art classes from Jere Allen before he retired from teaching at Ole Miss.”

Bradley’s teaching career was as vibrant and evocative as his artistic works are today.
He loved working with young students and wanted to stay in Oxford, but the teaching
opportunities for art were scarce. “So, I taught two or three morning classes at the high
school, then moved to the elementary school in the afternoons. I taught at Holly Springs
as well.”

A couple of years after college, Bradley took a bold step after he and his sweetheart
parted ways. With cash in his pocket from selling his cabin at nearby Sardis Lake,
Bradley took a position in Taiwan with a TEFL program (Teaching English as a Foreign
Language). Guided by a childlike curiosity and an adventurous spirit, Bradley
approached life with an open heart, where “yes” always seemed to be his answer.

After a month of intensive eight-hour training sessions in Taipei, Bradley was thrown
into a classroom teaching young Chinese children to speak English. He never learned
Chinese, but his language of joy carried his students across the threshold into a
language of art and play.

The language barrier didn’t hinder Bradley’s art. During the eighteen months in Taiwan, Bradley
lived in a glass-walled penthouse overlooking the city and participated in an international art
exhibition.

When I asked about his artwork from that time, Bradley shared, “I did a series of
portraits on the kids I was teaching. And another series on the local betel nut girls.”

“Excuse me? What?”

Bradley laughed. “They’re young women, usually scantily dressed, who sell betel nuts
from kiosks along the roads in Taiwan.” The nuts—seeds from locally grown palm trees,
are chewed for recreational stimulation. The girls act as additional stimulation to
encourage customers.

Bradley continued. “I remember this funeral on the side of the road with a puppet show
and a stripper on a pole. Fireworks were going off, and incense was burning, and there was this
dead body. Here I am–this kid from the cotton fields of Mississippi witnessing these very foreign
traditions.”

Ultimately, Bradley left Taiwan to return home when his mother’s dementia worsened. “I
wanted to be there for my family, so I came back and got a job teaching art at
Germantown Middle School,” a school in a town just east of Memphis, Tennessee.

Though he enjoyed teaching, Bradley didn’t see himself settling in the Memphis
area long-term. After two years, he took another TEFL assignment in Japan.

“It wasn’t a big franchise like Taiwan; it was a family-owned school in a little town. I might teach air cargo workers one day and kindergartners the next. I loved Japan. The people
were so considerate and giving.”

After a year in Japan, Bradley returned to the States and eventually bought some
property in Water Valley, a community just south of Oxford. “I wasn’t missing home. But
my family was going through some changes. I think it was just time for me to, you
know…”

What can we say about fate, about the universe, about a power larger than we are. Sometimes, we must stop moving, stop thinking, and start observing.

Shortly after his return, Bradley ran into his former sweetheart, Anne-Marie Varnell, at the
Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford. Years earlier, their breakup prompted Bradley’s move to
Taiwan; they hadn’t been in contact for nearly a decade, and neither had married in the interim.
Anne-Marie had started a business while she was at Ole Miss. It was initially a day spa,
but she eventually changed the format to the ladies' clothing boutique, Cicada, located
on South Lamar. It’s a popular boutique adding to the allure and fun that is downtown
Oxford.

Their reunion rekindled their connection, and Bradley decided to stay in Mississippi.

“All I want is to paint and play music,” Bradley shared with Anne-Marie when they first
reconnected. Her response was simple: “How can we make that happen?”

Bradley found a building in Clarksdale. He created an art gallery in the space. There, he
could paint and sell his art and live in a space in the back. “I also taught private art
lessons to the local kids. Clarksdale has had troubling times, and there’s not a lot for the
youth. That’s also when I started selling my body of wildlife paintings. It was all about
coming home to the Delta. I began painting from my childhood memories—ducks, deer,
turtles, turkeys—when I was always out in the woods.”

I interjected. “Your art is so identifiable. It’s almost like a kaleidoscope. How did you get
there?”

“I remember Jere Allen telling me, ‘You can’t paint if you don’t have paint on your
brush.’ I think you steal from the artists you love. Jere uses bright, saturated colors. His
work has always slapped me in the face in the best way. The influences from the
hyper Asian pop art, its explosiveness, the bright colors—Tokyo and the fast pace
and the flashing lights—are all those things you draw from. I was painting ten, twelve hours
a day. I just kept paint on that brush.”

People have spoken of Bradley’s work as pointillism, but there’s more to it. The dots are
larger, filled with an almost geometric intensity, a painting within a dot.

“My early paintings were bigger brushstrokes, broad, looser. I remember I had been struggling with this painting. I grabbed a set of chopsticks I brought home from Japan
and started scribbling in the wet paint, down to an underpainting beneath the thick paint
on top.”

That simple action set off a new direction for Bradley. “My brushstrokes have gotten
smaller; the renderings are more realistic. Now, if I’m painting a horse, I’ll sketch it out;
it’ll look like a horse painting. Then I’ll go back with thicker paint, making thousands of
blobs of brushstrokes, then I’ll scratch back into those brushstrokes, into that
underpainting.”

While wildlife remains Bradley’s main body of work, collectors often commission him for
portraits and landscapes. “I’ve been fortunate to do work for professional athletes,
corporate executives, and international collectors,” he said modestly.

Genevieve, Bradley’s nine-year-old daughter, slipped into the room and onto her
daddy’s lap. For me, all the pieces of his life fell into place in that moment. The bright
colors and the joy of each day lay manifest in that picture. What a lucky little girl she is!

By Julie Mabus