Conrad Jon Godly is a Swiss creative who has a wide array of artistic talent, but is currently featured for his transition from commercial photography back to oil painting. After a thriving career as a star photographer, the Davos-born artist resumed painting and started another successful climb upwards with completely new kind of work.
Godly worked as a photographer with models and celebrities for 18 years, but shifted towards oil painting in 2004. He studied painting before working as a photographer, and picked it back up to work out some of the inner conflicts that he couldn't explore through photography. His paintings' focus on mountains, but unlike familiar landscape works with same subject matter, his thick and textured dark renderings of some of the Earth's highest peaks were representational of his personal lowest points and most covert feelings and thoughts. Godly held these paintings closely and only recently felt comfortable sharing them outside of his studio.
These works represent not only the impressive appearance of the mountains, but also, for Godly, a stark contrast to the fast and superficial life he left behind. Unmoved, mysterious and imperishable, they almost carry a political and sociological message when seen in the context of his previous work. Not aiming to satisfy nostalgic longing through his paintings, Godly recently started creating a completely new body of work out of deep desire to reach people and send a message out in a world perceived as out of balance. As seen on his social media presence and seen in the studio shots we took, the newer pieces are featuring animal motifs and are strongly relying on his vigorous brush strokes. Once again, he is keeping these works only to himself for the time being, but knowing how dedicated and demanding he is when it comes to his output we can rest assured that the suspense will be worth the wait.––Sasha Bogojev