Alan Bray Paintings
American, b. 1946
Alan Bray was born in Waterville, Maine, on January 12, 1946, but he grew up in Monson, a small slate-quarrying town set in the northern reaches of the Appalachians. It was here, hiking and camping with liked-minded childhood friends, that he began to exercise his natural inquisitiveness as a tool for building woods-craft. In these rugged foothills, ever alive with the turning of the seasons yet always plainly bearing the imprint of eons-old geologic upheaval, Bray learned to find his way around in a world of enigmatic signs and divergent trails. Unwittingly, before ever picking up a brush, he developed the sensibilities of a landscape painter by developing sensitivities to the relationships between the living and the ancient land on which life depends.
Later, when Bray decided to study art formally, he enrolled in the Art Institute of Boston, where he first felt the appeal of image-making as a way of understanding the world. Three years of studio work revealed the need for a more traditional approach to the discipline of painting, one informed by the broader range of a liberal education, a revelation that prompted Bray to enroll at the University of Southern Maine, from which he graduated in 1971. While this education was in many ways a success – particularly in the way it engendered literacies in fields outside the fine arts – it was nevertheless incomplete: well-prepared now for the next leg of the journey, Bray traveled to Florence to study at Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine Arts.
Villa Schifanoia, Florence, the Italian Renaissance held many treasures and gave freely to a painter who was now mature enough in his art to receive them. Including a new medium and a new physical structure for his paintings –tempera on panel. The technical challenges of this medium, the necessary adjustments in craft, and the limitations of scale favored, and inspired, someone of a practical as well as a visionary intelligence.
Bray paints in casein, a milk-based tempera that has virtually no drying time. Necessarily, his paintings are technically complex because they consist of thousands of tiny brush strokes, built up in layers, out of which the images – the vision – advance from the foundation of a mirror-smooth, absolute void of white ground. It is a method of painting that follows directly from his method of exploring his subjects.to
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Artist: Alan Bray
First Light, A Misty Morning Sunrise Scene in Maine with a Mountain View
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
In First Light (2024), Alan Bray captures the quiet majesty of dawn over Spencer Pond, Maine. This luminous casein tempera on panel painting (15 x 24 inches) depicts a breathtaking s...
Category
2010s American Realist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
Fallow, Rustic Farmhouse Landscape Painting in Maine, Autumn Fields, Elm Tree
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
As the artist states about this painting: "I first photographed this farm because it had one of the last living Elm trees in our area. Most began dying in the 70's and there are very...
Category
2010s American Realist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
Clearing Off, contemporary Impressionist casein landscape painting
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
Alan Bray’s landscape paintings of his native, central Maine explore the ever-ebbing dynamic between nature and humanity. His paintings capture an asymmetrical pas de deux. Painted with uncompromising precision by his quick-drying casein tempera paint, Bray’s trailheads, shorelines, and vast horizons show evidence of previous human presence as it succumbs to natural growth.
Bray’s stylized scenes center on these afterimages of human interference as well as other natural phenomena. Inundated with detail, nature reclaims swaths of scarred land, fallen trees, and dilapidated structures, returning them to their wild form. Natural phenomena such as wild overgrowth, animal tracks, mysterious forms, bogs, and mist are resplendently captured as homage to the rugged and uninhabited corners of secluded Maine.
Alan Bray builds his landscapes with numerous layers of quick-drying casein tempera. Often used in Italian Renaissance painting...
Category
2010s American Impressionist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
A Rise, blue and green casein on panel impressionist waterscape painting, 2004
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
Bray has explored a smaller, more demure 8.5 x 11 inch format for two of these casein on panel paintings. When coupled with his rich palette and tightly hatched bed of brushstrokes, ...
Category
2010s American Impressionist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein
Neighbors Snowy branches, bird nests, gnome-like forms casein tempera painting
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
Alan Bray’s Neighbors is a masterful casein tempera painting capturing the quiet beauty of winter. Delicate, snow-covered branches contrast against a crisp blue sky, while two bird n...
Category
2010s American Realist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
A Whisper Breaks the Silence, A Poetic Wintry Landscape with Soft Blue and White
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
In A Whisper Breaks the Silence (2024), Alan Bray masterfully captures the quiet majesty of a deep winter forest in Maine. This luminous casein tempera on panel painting (15 x 20 inc...
Category
2010s American Realist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
Relic, Mystical Woodland Scene with Reflections and Mystery, Surreal Landscape
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
From the artist: The water tank in the painting was purchased by a farmer (neighbor) from a tanning mill that had closed and repurposed as a spring fed tank for holding water for the...
Category
2010s American Realist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Encaustic, Panel
Alan Bray, Nest in a Nest, 2023, impressionist casein nature nest painting
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
For Alan Bray's Nest in a Nest (also known as Rebuilt Nest), this painting captures the delicate, yet powerful theme of renewal and resilience in nature. The bird's nest, constructed...
Category
2010s American Realist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
Alan Bray, Windblown, 2023, impressionist casein nature nest painting
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
The latest painting from Alan Bray is a rare and exotic sighting, indeed. He’s shifted his focus away from the human realm and up to the skies, capturing an empty bird’s nest camoufl...
Category
2010s American Impressionist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
Hermit Thrush, impressionist casein nature painting of eggs in bird nest
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
A narrative from the artist:
"It belonged to a Hermit Thrush, which has one of the most beautiful songs in all of nature. Give it a listen on Audubon. A...
Category
2010s American Impressionist Alan Bray Paintings
Materials
Casein, Panel
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Corduroy Road
By Alan Bray
Located in New York, NY
These kinds of woods roads are called Corduroy roads, laid down to traverse wet spots and boggy places. I came across this one in a large stand of Tamarack, which shed their needles ...
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Wet Spot
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Located in New York, NY
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Located in New York, NY
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Alan Bray, Four Things in the Wind, charcoal and conte landscape drawing, 2015
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Located in New York, NY
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Alan Bray paintings for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Alan Bray paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of paintings to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of blue and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Alan Bray in casein paint, paint, tempera and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 21st century and contemporary and is mostly associated with the Impressionist style. Not every interior allows for large Alan Bray paintings, so small editions measuring 18 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Samuel Hyde Harris, Stephen Motyka, and Frank Vincent Dumond. Alan Bray paintings prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $7,200 and tops out at $12,000, while the average work can sell for $11,000.