Biography
Ajay Brainard (b. 1971) is an artist whose subtle, evocative compositions speak not only to his skill as an academic painter, but reveal the gentle and contemplative heart of a poet. Ajay’s mother first recognized his creative tendencies at the tender age of 5, when he made use of a carelessly unattended paint roller to transform the family dog from an uninspiring white to a far more painterly shade of blue. As a child, he eschewed the athletic preoccupations of his peers, preferring to spend recess collecting insects, sitting contemplatively under a tree, or quietly drawing images culled from the pages of National Geographic. At fifteen years of age, when many teenagers dedicate themselves to mischief, the purchase of his first airbrush kept Ajay cloistered in his parents’ basement assiduously pursuing his craft. In the 1980’s, the books of Robert Bateman and Carl Brenders became the artist’s tacit but influential mentors, and Bob Koenke’s Wildlife Art Magazine provided a window to a world where working artists drew their inspiration from nature. Even his first unlikely career as a truckdriver for fifteen years left him time to pursue his artistic aspirations, until 2008 when he returned to school to pursue a degree and the dream of dedicating his life to art.
After years of self-guided experimentation, Brainard’s technical skills already set him apart from his peers at Hamden, Connecticut’s, Paier College of Fine Art, but art school encouraged him to incorporate non-objective treatments and abstract concepts into his work. During his junior year, Peter Bonadies, a particularly influential Thesis Program Advisor, urged the budding artist to look inward, to move beyond his then obsession with trompe le’ oeil still life, to something more personal. A chance encounter with a dead red-tailed hawk on the side of the road proved Brainard’s turning point. An intensive 2010 workshop with the venerable Pergamena Tannery in the Hudson River Valley had already introduced Ajay to the physical process of transforming an animal’s hide into a substrate for painting or drawing. Years of absorption in the environs of his native Connecticut had long fostered an obsession with found objects, from feathers and rocks to insect casings and bones. His study of the Japanese principle of Wabi Sabi nurtured his appreciation for the beauty of states of decay and the evidence of the passage of time, from the rusting of a metal hinge to the slow and inexorable dissolution of flesh. A lifetime of introspection and a deeply emotional, empathetic character, coupled with his Thesis Advisor’s nearly psychiatric approach to student counseling, had reinforced an innate and therapeutic love of writing that has continued to manifest itself in Brainard’s visual storytelling. With the discovery of this dead bird, left so unceremoniously by the side of the road, all of these influences came into focus, and Ajay’s unique stylistic vision began to crystallize.
His artistic direction thus determined with uncommon certainty and deeply felt conviction, Ajay received his BFA from Paier College of Fine Art in 2011, which awarded him the Herbert J. Gute Memorial Prize and honored him for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts. Since then his work has toured nationally with the New York based Society of Animal Artists, of which he is a signature member, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wasau, WI, which added his work to their permanent collection in 2012, after the artist’s participation in their prestigious annual Birds in Art Exhibition. Other noteworthy showings include Art of the Animal Kingdom at the Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington, VT, multiple exhibitions at The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, and the Kentucky International Wildlife Art Exhibition at the Henderson Fine Arts Center, Henderson, KY. With these and no doubt many future showings on the horizon, Ajay Brainard has already secured his place among a passionate vanguard of distinctive new voices in the long and multifaceted history of artists inspired by the natural world.
“We mark the passage of human life with great fanfare” says the artist, “but so many other things pass away without our noticing or memorializing them in any way. Even a rusted screw was once part of something special and valuable. Everything that an animal has to offer, even in death, is beautiful, and it deserves to be marked with reverence and appreciation.” Far from harboring a morbid fascination with death, Ajay’s work celebrates even the smallest, most often overlooked aspects of life. His subtle, quiet, and evocative juxtapositions of natural elements, impassively discarded man-made objects, and animal matter, not only serve as the artist’s own intense, introspective autobiographical narratives about his own mortality, but on a broader scale speak with gentle and reassuring calm about the beauty of life and the necessity of death. Ajay Brainard gives us a glimpse of the inevitable and imbues it the sense of enduring peace that lies at the heart of truth and pervades the soul of art itself.
-Andrew Denman, Artist, 2013
After years of self-guided experimentation, Brainard’s technical skills already set him apart from his peers at Hamden, Connecticut’s, Paier College of Fine Art, but art school encouraged him to incorporate non-objective treatments and abstract concepts into his work. During his junior year, Peter Bonadies, a particularly influential Thesis Program Advisor, urged the budding artist to look inward, to move beyond his then obsession with trompe le’ oeil still life, to something more personal. A chance encounter with a dead red-tailed hawk on the side of the road proved Brainard’s turning point. An intensive 2010 workshop with the venerable Pergamena Tannery in the Hudson River Valley had already introduced Ajay to the physical process of transforming an animal’s hide into a substrate for painting or drawing. Years of absorption in the environs of his native Connecticut had long fostered an obsession with found objects, from feathers and rocks to insect casings and bones. His study of the Japanese principle of Wabi Sabi nurtured his appreciation for the beauty of states of decay and the evidence of the passage of time, from the rusting of a metal hinge to the slow and inexorable dissolution of flesh. A lifetime of introspection and a deeply emotional, empathetic character, coupled with his Thesis Advisor’s nearly psychiatric approach to student counseling, had reinforced an innate and therapeutic love of writing that has continued to manifest itself in Brainard’s visual storytelling. With the discovery of this dead bird, left so unceremoniously by the side of the road, all of these influences came into focus, and Ajay’s unique stylistic vision began to crystallize.
His artistic direction thus determined with uncommon certainty and deeply felt conviction, Ajay received his BFA from Paier College of Fine Art in 2011, which awarded him the Herbert J. Gute Memorial Prize and honored him for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts. Since then his work has toured nationally with the New York based Society of Animal Artists, of which he is a signature member, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wasau, WI, which added his work to their permanent collection in 2012, after the artist’s participation in their prestigious annual Birds in Art Exhibition. Other noteworthy showings include Art of the Animal Kingdom at the Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington, VT, multiple exhibitions at The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, and the Kentucky International Wildlife Art Exhibition at the Henderson Fine Arts Center, Henderson, KY. With these and no doubt many future showings on the horizon, Ajay Brainard has already secured his place among a passionate vanguard of distinctive new voices in the long and multifaceted history of artists inspired by the natural world.
“We mark the passage of human life with great fanfare” says the artist, “but so many other things pass away without our noticing or memorializing them in any way. Even a rusted screw was once part of something special and valuable. Everything that an animal has to offer, even in death, is beautiful, and it deserves to be marked with reverence and appreciation.” Far from harboring a morbid fascination with death, Ajay’s work celebrates even the smallest, most often overlooked aspects of life. His subtle, quiet, and evocative juxtapositions of natural elements, impassively discarded man-made objects, and animal matter, not only serve as the artist’s own intense, introspective autobiographical narratives about his own mortality, but on a broader scale speak with gentle and reassuring calm about the beauty of life and the necessity of death. Ajay Brainard gives us a glimpse of the inevitable and imbues it the sense of enduring peace that lies at the heart of truth and pervades the soul of art itself.
-Andrew Denman, Artist, 2013
