Christian Bradley West

Christian Bradley West's work has been featured in numerous galleries and museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Houston Center For Photography. His photographs are part of several private and public collections, most notably those of Lucinda Bunnen and Sir Elton John. Christian started out primarily as a photographer but has also incorporated painting and drawing into his work. Using vernacular and found photographs as his subjects, he first draws the image in graphite, then paints over and distresses it to maintain the feel of the original. "I love the feeling of memory and nostalgia." West says. "The found photos represent intimate cross sections of a larger collective experience and history. The people and the moments captured in the photographs are made timeless by the sheer fact that they are a fraction of a second caught on film, made tangible on paper, then discovered decades later. They become even more real for me when I reproduce them in another medium, connecting my present-day to theirs".