At a time when nostalgia has proven to provide comfort and respite, Thinkspace Projects is pleased to present Brad Woodfin’s Glad You’re Here, a solo exhibition inspired by songs from decades ago.
Filled with sentimentality and a bittersweet melancholy, the paintings for Glad You’re Here take cues from the moods of certain old songs, including the particular language around sadness: being blue. Woodfin reflects this in the colours of the portraits, the symbolism, and iconography. A self-described fan of devotional art, the experience Woodfin creates is nothing short of poetic. Pulling from an audio medium to a visual one, Woodfin manages to preserve the nostalgic feeling of “Golden Moments,” a grief that buzzes through speakers rising like smoke rings to meet every era. The title only feeds into the experience, intentionally chosen as something that may be a bit disarming to say out loud.
His portraits of creatures, rendered carefully on a rich dark background, evoke the portraits from the Dutch Golden Age. The posture of his subjects and his use of light combine to bestow each species with an almost religious reverence. With reverence for his subjects, Brad favours expression and mood over academic documentation.
“‘Glad You’re Here’ is influenced by the moods and colors of certain old songs, how they can be sort of soft and spacious but at the same time be sort of devastating. I named the paintings after real old songs, I made them to sound like old songs. It’s devotional, it’s a bit sentimental and a bit dark and I love all those things.”
