Virginia Bradley

Striking Animal World Imagery by Virginia Bradley

Transcendent, thought-invoking works focusing on endangered denizens of the animal world are spotlighted in Virginia Bradley's exhibit 'Jeopardy', opening March 2 in the Art Gallery, 2^nd floor Connelly Center.

The show is comprised mostly of large and very large renderings (one 9 x 8 feet) of creatures great and small, extinct and extant, but principally of those currently in danger of disappearing.

Students and staff are invited to a free reception to meet the Philadelphia artist, University of Delaware art professor, and Reading, PA native on Friday, March 13, from 5 to 7 pm in the Gallery. Refreshments will be served. 

Writes a reviewer of her art: “Virginia Bradley's paintings are mysterious and . . . possess an organic materiality that declares the lengthy and intricate process of their making. They have been lived with and loved. Looking at them, viewers can . . . layer their own experiences and memories on top of Bradley's.”

In Decticus, an image of the tip-of-the-finger-sized bush cricket looms large in a watery world while others hover above, obscured by a misty veil of multi-colored folds. The word 'Decticus' writ large and faded across the top lends the work a tombstone motif. Also known as the wart biter for its use by humans to remove the unwanted growths, the decticus faces extinction.

Her huge 6 ½ - x 10-foot A Zoological Airing was inspired by the history of the Tower of London, where executions once took place amid the cacophony of exotic animals gifted to Britain's monarchs by visiting dignitaries and penned in the Tower's zoo.

“I tried to imagine how Ann Boleyn might have felt hearing lions roar as she waited to be killed,” notes Bradley. The imagining, she adds, “helped lead me to contemporary connections with endangered species.”

A Zoological Airing depicts a menagerie of cavorting animals, putting to mind children larking in a school yard. “I strive to ingrain a sense of history and memory in my imagery,” says Bradley. She notes that many of the some 180 animal species once held in the Tower zoo are today extinct or endangered.

There is a strong ethereal quality in Hirola, her painting of three antelope prancing ghostlike in a lemony orange mist. In alarming decline, the disappearance of the hirola will mean the passing of an entire ancient antelope group.

Though Bradley's art is borne of abiding feelings for animals (She is intrigued by their primordial sense of purity and beauty.), she says, “I'm not preaching. I'm trying to create awareness. I desire for my work to offer viewers alternative perceptions to certainty – past and present.”

Bradley's source materials, gathered from around the world, include anthologies, historic engravings, prints and plates that “fit together natural phenomenon and water, and man's desires to overtake the natural world.”   Frescoes hanging in the Medici Palace in Florence, Italy, inspired her swan series, while illustrations in 'Fabre's Book of Insects', the celebrated the 19^thcentury study by Jean Henri Fabre, was the basis for the insect series in her Villanova exhibit.

Bradley's art has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally in England, Spain, Italy, and India. She received her Master in Fine Art degree in painting from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor in Fine Art in painting and printmaking from the University of Miami.

The Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 am into most evenings. For extended and weekend hours, and other information, telephone the Art Gallery at (610) 519-4612. Selected works for the Virginia Bradley exhibit may be previewed on the gallery’s website at www.artgallery.villanova.edu.

Striking Animal World Imagery by Virginia Bradley

Transcendent, thought-invoking works focusing on endangered denizens of the animal world are spotlighted in Virginia Bradley's exhibit 'Jeopardy', opening March 2 in the Art Gallery, 2^nd floor Connelly Center.

The show is comprised mostly of large and very large renderings (one 9 x 8 feet) of creatures great and small, extinct and extant, but principally of those currently in danger of disappearing.

Students and staff are invited to a free reception to meet the Philadelphia artist, University of Delaware art professor, and Reading, PA native on Friday, March 13, from 5 to 7 pm in the Gallery. Refreshments will be served. 

Writes a reviewer of her art: “Virginia Bradley's paintings are mysterious and . . . possess an organic materiality that declares the lengthy and intricate process of their making. They have been lived with and loved. Looking at them, viewers can . . . layer their own experiences and memories on top of Bradley's.”

In Decticus, an image of the tip-of-the-finger-sized bush cricket looms large in a watery world while others hover above, obscured by a misty veil of multi-colored folds. The word 'Decticus' writ large and faded across the top lends the work a tombstone motif. Also known as the wart biter for its use by humans to remove the unwanted growths, the decticus faces extinction.

Her huge 6 ½ - x 10-foot A Zoological Airing was inspired by the history of the Tower of London, where executions once took place amid the cacophony of exotic animals gifted to Britain's monarchs by visiting dignitaries and penned in the Tower's zoo.

“I tried to imagine how Ann Boleyn might have felt hearing lions roar as she waited to be killed,” notes Bradley. The imagining, she adds, “helped lead me to contemporary connections with endangered species.”

A Zoological Airing depicts a menagerie of cavorting animals, putting to mind children larking in a school yard. “I strive to ingrain a sense of history and memory in my imagery,” says Bradley. She notes that many of the some 180 animal species once held in the Tower zoo are today extinct or endangered.

There is a strong ethereal quality in Hirola, her painting of three antelope prancing ghostlike in a lemony orange mist. In alarming decline, the disappearance of the hirola will mean the passing of an entire ancient antelope group.

Though Bradley's art is borne of abiding feelings for animals (She is intrigued by their primordial sense of purity and beauty.), she says, “I'm not preaching. I'm trying to create awareness. I desire for my work to offer viewers alternative perceptions to certainty – past and present.”

Bradley's source materials, gathered from around the world, include anthologies, historic engravings, prints and plates that “fit together natural phenomenon and water, and man's desires to overtake the natural world.”   Frescoes hanging in the Medici Palace in Florence, Italy, inspired her swan series, while illustrations in 'Fabre's Book of Insects', the celebrated the 19^thcentury study by Jean Henri Fabre, was the basis for the insect series in her Villanova exhibit.

Bradley's art has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally in England, Spain, Italy, and India. She received her Master in Fine Art degree in painting from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor in Fine Art in painting and printmaking from the University of Miami.

The Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 am into most evenings. For extended and weekend hours, and other information, telephone the Art Gallery at (610) 519-4612. Selected works for the Virginia Bradley exhibit may be previewed on the gallery’s website at www.artgallery.villanova.edu.

Striking Animal World Imagery by Virginia Bradley

Transcendent, thought-invoking works focusing on endangered denizens of the animal world are spotlighted in Virginia Bradley's exhibit 'Jeopardy', opening March 2 in the Art Gallery, 2^nd floor Connelly Center.

The show is comprised mostly of large and very large renderings (one 9 x 8 feet) of creatures great and small, extinct and extant, but principally of those currently in danger of disappearing.

Students and staff are invited to a free reception to meet the Philadelphia artist, University of Delaware art professor, and Reading, PA native on Friday, March 13, from 5 to 7 pm in the Gallery. Refreshments will be served. 

Writes a reviewer of her art: “Virginia Bradley's paintings are mysterious and . . . possess an organic materiality that declares the lengthy and intricate process of their making. They have been lived with and loved. Looking at them, viewers can . . . layer their own experiences and memories on top of Bradley's.”

In Decticus, an image of the tip-of-the-finger-sized bush cricket looms large in a watery world while others hover above, obscured by a misty veil of multi-colored folds. The word 'Decticus' writ large and faded across the top lends the work a tombstone motif. Also known as the wart biter for its use by humans to remove the unwanted growths, the decticus faces extinction.

Her huge 6 ½ - x 10-foot A Zoological Airing was inspired by the history of the Tower of London, where executions once took place amid the cacophony of exotic animals gifted to Britain's monarchs by visiting dignitaries and penned in the Tower's zoo.

“I tried to imagine how Ann Boleyn might have felt hearing lions roar as she waited to be killed,” notes Bradley. The imagining, she adds, “helped lead me to contemporary connections with endangered species.”

A Zoological Airing depicts a menagerie of cavorting animals, putting to mind children larking in a school yard. “I strive to ingrain a sense of history and memory in my imagery,” says Bradley. She notes that many of the some 180 animal species once held in the Tower zoo are today extinct or endangered.

There is a strong ethereal quality in Hirola, her painting of three antelope prancing ghostlike in a lemony orange mist. In alarming decline, the disappearance of the hirola will mean the passing of an entire ancient antelope group.

Though Bradley's art is borne of abiding feelings for animals (She is intrigued by their primordial sense of purity and beauty.), she says, “I'm not preaching. I'm trying to create awareness. I desire for my work to offer viewers alternative perceptions to certainty – past and present.”

Bradley's source materials, gathered from around the world, include anthologies, historic engravings, prints and plates that “fit together natural phenomenon and water, and man's desires to overtake the natural world.”   Frescoes hanging in the Medici Palace in Florence, Italy, inspired her swan series, while illustrations in 'Fabre's Book of Insects', the celebrated the 19^thcentury study by Jean Henri Fabre, was the basis for the insect series in her Villanova exhibit.

Bradley's art has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally in England, Spain, Italy, and India. She received her Master in Fine Art degree in painting from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor in Fine Art in painting and printmaking from the University of Miami.

The Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 am into most evenings. For extended and weekend hours, and other information, telephone the Art Gallery at (610) 519-4612. Selected works for the Virginia Bradley exhibit may be previewed on the gallery’s website at www.artgallery.villanova.edu.

Striking Animal World Imagery by Virginia Bradley

Transcendent, thought-invoking works focusing on endangered denizens of the animal world are spotlighted in Virginia Bradley's exhibit 'Jeopardy', opening March 2 in the Art Gallery, 2^nd floor Connelly Center.

The show is comprised mostly of large and very large renderings (one 9 x 8 feet) of creatures great and small, extinct and extant, but principally of those currently in danger of disappearing.

Students and staff are invited to a free reception to meet the Philadelphia artist, University of Delaware art professor, and Reading, PA native on Friday, March 13, from 5 to 7 pm in the Gallery. Refreshments will be served. 

Writes a reviewer of her art: “Virginia Bradley's paintings are mysterious and . . . possess an organic materiality that declares the lengthy and intricate process of their making. They have been lived with and loved. Looking at them, viewers can . . . layer their own experiences and memories on top of Bradley's.”

In Decticus, an image of the tip-of-the-finger-sized bush cricket looms large in a watery world while others hover above, obscured by a misty veil of multi-colored folds. The word 'Decticus' writ large and faded across the top lends the work a tombstone motif. Also known as the wart biter for its use by humans to remove the unwanted growths, the decticus faces extinction.

Her huge 6 ½ - x 10-foot A Zoological Airing was inspired by the history of the Tower of London, where executions once took place amid the cacophony of exotic animals gifted to Britain's monarchs by visiting dignitaries and penned in the Tower's zoo.

“I tried to imagine how Ann Boleyn might have felt hearing lions roar as she waited to be killed,” notes Bradley. The imagining, she adds, “helped lead me to contemporary connections with endangered species.”

A Zoological Airing depicts a menagerie of cavorting animals, putting to mind children larking in a school yard. “I strive to ingrain a sense of history and memory in my imagery,” says Bradley. She notes that many of the some 180 animal species once held in the Tower zoo are today extinct or endangered.

There is a strong ethereal quality in Hirola, her painting of three antelope prancing ghostlike in a lemony orange mist. In alarming decline, the disappearance of the hirola will mean the passing of an entire ancient antelope group.

Though Bradley's art is borne of abiding feelings for animals (She is intrigued by their primordial sense of purity and beauty.), she says, “I'm not preaching. I'm trying to create awareness. I desire for my work to offer viewers alternative perceptions to certainty – past and present.”

Bradley's source materials, gathered from around the world, include anthologies, historic engravings, prints and plates that “fit together natural phenomenon and water, and man's desires to overtake the natural world.”   Frescoes hanging in the Medici Palace in Florence, Italy, inspired her swan series, while illustrations in 'Fabre's Book of Insects', the celebrated the 19^thcentury study by Jean Henri Fabre, was the basis for the insect series in her Villanova exhibit.

Bradley's art has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally in England, Spain, Italy, and India. She received her Master in Fine Art degree in painting from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor in Fine Art in painting and printmaking from the University of Miami.

The Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 am into most evenings. For extended and weekend hours, and other information, telephone the Art Gallery at (610) 519-4612. Selected works for the Virginia Bradley exhibit may be previewed on the gallery’s website at www.artgallery.villanova.edu.