Jack Braudis
is part of the grand tradition of en plein air oil painting where artists eschew the camera and take to the fields, coast and streetscapes to make paintings directly from nature. A difficult discipline, plein air painting is complicated by the weather, insects and curious passers by. Nonetheless it has a grand history with French Impressionism more or less starting the trend. Artists fascinated by the movement of the European middle class into the outdoors for leisure explored a new light filled palette and the textural possibilities of a more abstract brushstroke.
Braudis trained in art at the University of Massachusetts in a time of Modernist abstraction but it was his study under the mentor Maurice Kennedy that allowed him to develop as the master landscape painter he is today.
In 2009 Jack moved to Australia and painted from his studio in Newtown Sydney. In 2018 he moved further South to Geeveston where the Tasmanian landscape acts as a constant inspiration for his work.
Stylistically, these exuberant landscape works bear a resemblance to the Australian Impressionist John Russell. Informed by the bright Antipodean light and using an early Modern European palette Jack Braudis’s colour is complex and subtle. Dark greyed purples stand in for brown and salmon pinks underpin olive greens. The excitement of outdoor painting is conveyed by rough edges that show process and vigour while painterly brushwork expresses the wild nature of Southern Tasmania.
