About the Artist

Brandon Aday paints from South Florida — abstract, intuitive, built without brushes.

Originally from the South Jersey / Philadelphia area, Brandon studied at the Art Institute of Philadelphia before rekindling his practice in Miami. He works in acrylic and oil, on canvas and paper, in an Abstract Expressionist tradition.

Brandon Aday at Pridelines Gallery during Miami Art Week, standing beside one of his works. — At Pridelines Gallery during Miami Art Week.

Practice

A copper-bronze canvas split by a single vertical organic vein down the center. — The hand is visible in the surface, not the brush.

The work begins without brushes. Brandon applies paint with scrapers, squeegees, and tools picked up at the dollar store — pouring directly onto the canvas, letting it drip, drop, scrape, and, occasionally, pressing two wet canvases together.

Sometimes a painting resolves in a day. Other times a canvas stays on the easel for a week and a half, returned to in increments. The direction can shift mid-process. He works toward a feeling he calls silence.

“I will work on the painting until the canvas has nothing else to say to me. When I look at the painting and feel silence, that is when I know I am done.”

A painting with a yellow line drawing over splatter on a white wall, flanked by smaller works. — Group show, mid-wall — yellow line drawing over splatter ground.

A collector holds a teal painting in a gallery surrounded by other works. — A collector with a newly acquired canvas at a Miami gallery.

Looking

A visitor reaches toward a canvas at close range in a gallery. — Looking at the work at close range.

Source material comes from looking down and looking at edges. Brandon collects hundreds of photographs of urban surfaces — concrete textures, cracked sidewalks, graffiti, stains, peeled paint on weathered walls.