Glenn Brady. born 1966 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
I began painting around the age of 12 or so, I didn't know anything about it and couldn't really come up with much that I liked. After four years I gave it away and like all those around me out in the suburbs, I began to drink and take drugs. After ten years or so of this I picked up the brushes again and began painting band shirts. Happy with the results I decided to go bigger and since then haven't really stopped.
Through these years I began to go through severe bouts of depression and a general strangeness that I could only deal with using alcohol. The end result was to see me touch down in the local psychiatric ward, and since that first stay I've come and gone from these hospitals every two years or so. Why it is like this?... I'm not sure. Pills and shock treatment followed.
I always,and
still only usually paint the things that I know.
The two things that had an impact on my life: my childhood growing up in the
northern suburbs of Brisbane, and the recurring bouts of depression.
I have noticed I seem to paint the 'burbs in two ways... one in a soft, familiar way, which shows that even though at a glance they appear to be just houses in a row, all of them are subtly as different as the people that inhabit and own them. The other is seeing them in a darker light that shows buildings massed together without any regard for any kind of beauty. Good and bad I guess.
Teenagers are still taking drugs and drinking in parks and having sex behind there parents house just as I did... People getting stoned in hotted up cars, racing through the streets listening to the music of the day. People screwing, crying, laughing, hating, loving all within earshot of their neighbours who they might never meet.
This is all I have known and that is just fine... it might not hold any grand ideals of art or nature, but in the end it is life with people struggling through it as best as they can.
I still paint now for the same reasons as I did when I started... because the things that I saw around me, which was just homes, yards and people really meant something to me...I don't know why....
Its not that
you see things others don't...I guess its just how you take it all in....
I always liked how from the sky suburbs all look the same, just roofs and yards,
but up close each is as different as the people who inhabit them... each is
a persons small kingdom, and all prone to the owners imagination.. So I saw
all this as a boy and wanted to capture it...which looking back is kind of odd
because before that all I wanted to be was a pro football player or a soldier
and spent most of my free time throwing stones at things..
I like simple things. I like to imagine what things would look like in different colours different shapes...to try to make the most average thing beautiful....to look out the window and see death walk past or any other assorted creatures. to see something fantastic in a dull setting...
Maybe if I went and lived somewhere else and saw different things my outlook might change...but it hasn't happened yet and I still have about 300 sketches to paint... I like it here.
Glenn Brady
Below is a partial list of Shows and Exhibitions in which Glenn's paintings have featured.
1992 - The Zoo cafe
1993 - Rics cafe
1995 - 2000 - Mental
Health Week Exhibition
1997 - Cafe Viva
1998 - Mahoneys Gallery Melbourne
1999 - Stones Corner Hotel
2000 - Shaftson House
2000 - Doggett
Street Studio
2000 - Mahoneys Gallery Melbourne
2003 - Hands On Art Gallery Brisbane
2005 - The Rivoli Gallery Brisbane