I welcome all comments and inquiries via the CONTACT FORM.

Pricing and commissioning of abstract paintings are all negotiable by email. I travel a great deal recently and work in different studios so I am often unavailable by telephone.

My work is done in oil, acrylic and occasionally with other materials to create abstract paintings. Recently I am using combinations of materials, as mixed-media, on various weights of canvas, sometimes sewn together or sewn in layers for textural complexity of the painting's surface.

My recent method of working has moved back to painting on a stretched canvas to complete the works, sign them and to have them photographed or exhibited. I then take them off of the stretcher bars for storage and/or shipping.

If you buy an abstract painting from me you may receive it unstretched, which is one of the reasons I provide free shipping and a very reasonable price. When you receive the painting you can stretch the canvas locally, or have it gallery wrapped as you please. I will stretch and frame or gallery wrap before shipping but there will be added charges.


SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

Group Exhibits:

Jordan Creek Art Gallery,SpringfieldMO '84
Oklahoma City Festival of the Arts,OK '84
Tulsa ArtFair, OK '85
Union Hill Arts, Kansas City, MO '85
A.D. Mac Art Gallery, Springfield, MO '85
Jordan Creek Art Gallery,SpringfieldMO '86
New River Art Gallery, Springfield, MO '86
San Antonio Summer Arts, TX '87
Nearly Famous Gallery, Springfield,MO '87
Sears Tower-Corporate Exhibit,Chi, IL '88
Dallas ArtFest, TX '88
KOZK Invitational Art Auction, MO '88
Springfield Art Museum, MO '89
George Milne's Ceramics Studio, MO '89
Maschino's Gallery, MO '90
St. Louis Lutheran Synod Exhibition '90
Orlando Gallery of Contemporary Art '96
Palm Beach Collectors' Gallery '01
Design Center of the Americas '01
Palm Beach Collectors' Gallery '02
Orlando Gallery of Contemporary Art '02

SOLO Exhibits:

Jordan Creek Art Center, MO '86
Jefferson City Racquet Club, MO '87
Rad Gallery, MO '88
Jordan Creek Art Center, MO '89
New River Gallery, MO '89
New Coast Gallery, MO '90
Springfield City Hall, MO '96
Orlando Gallery of Contemporary Art '01
Orlando Gallery of Contemporary Art, FL'03
Gallery - 45, Nikolaev, Ukraine '05
City Art Gallery, Nikolaev, Ukraine '05

Gallery Representation
Design Center of the Americas, FL

EDUCATION:

Studios with Russell Arnold - former Head of Art and Architecture Atlantic Christian College, Wilson,NC'68
Drawing and Painting Studios at Missouri State University, Springfield, MO '69-'72
Abstract Painting Studios at University of Missouri, Columbia, MO '82
Ceramics Studio - George Milne Studio - Springfield, MO '86


Biography

I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. My interest in art began with televised drawing lessons as a child with artist Jon Gnagy in his weekly program. Frequent trips with my father to the St. Louis Art Museum interested me in many facets of art, particularly for the magnificent work of Max Beckmann and the major modern artists that Morton D. May collected and donated to the museum. I did not understand Beckmann's work at that time, yet came to realize it had impacted me profoundly as a child in it's major movements and heavy contrasts. The strongest influence however came from my uncle, Russell Arnold, past Head of Art and Architecture at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, North Carolina - who allowed me from age 13 to attend lectures, work in the painting studios, watch and ask questions as he painted - he was an excellent teacher and mentor. His direct contact with the abstract expressionists in 40's and 50's New York City is apparent in his inspiring body of work. He is alive and still the authority on painting for me. - Brad Bannister


The act of finding oneself creatively is an ongoing and developmental process. Finding the best way to create a visual experience of feeling is both the task and the reward of creative expression. Color, form, and texture are used to create this visual experience; hopefully seen and experienced by the viewer. If a painting is not inspiring, not mysterious, not sensual - then it is not enough. If a painting is impacting and intimate and freeing then it provides a valued experience, and is hence a valued object. Abstract painting, especially nonobjective expressive painting, is ironically most able to be experienced as an object in and of itself, not representing or depicting some other thing. It is experienced sensually, without other meaning, in the same way as excellent piano or exhilirating weather, nonetheless inspiring. - Brad Bannister


Favorite Artists Lists:

Abstract Painting, Nonobjective or Non-representational - In Descending Order

Willem De Kooning (Greece on 8th Avenue)
Jackson Pollock (Alchemy)
Antoni Tapies
Kenneth Noland (Chevrons and Doors series)
Franz Kline
Tsuggio Hattori
Kurt Schwitters
Russell Arnold
Fritz Bultman
Ben Nicholson
Sam Francis

Figurative Painting & Art- In Descending Order

Max Beckmann
Henri Matisse
Georges Braque
Vincent VanGogh
Paul Gauguin
Ernst Kirchner
George Grosz
Auguste Rodin
Gaston LaChaise
Thomas Hart Benton
Juan Gris
Stuart Davis
Picasso
James Rosenquist
Otto Dix
Robert Indiana
Paul Klee
Franz Hals


My Favorite Quotations of Artists

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. - Leonardo da Vinci

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. - Leonardo da Vinci

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. - Giorgio DeChirico

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. - Edgar Degas

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. - Albert Einstein

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. - Paul Gaugin

To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage. - Georgia O'Keeffe

Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth. - Pablo Picasso

What good are computers? They can only give you answers. - Pablo Picasso

Every good painter paints what he is. - Jackson Pollock

The painting has a life of its own. - Jackson Pollock

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values. - T. S. Eliot

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. - William Faulkner

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep. - Marc Chagall

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. - Carl Rogers

Great things do not just happen by impulse, but are a sucession of small things linked together. - Vincent Van Gogh