Meet the Artist & Residency Winner - Bradley Wood
Meet Bradley Wood. Selected from over 900 submissions, the New York-based artist is one of the 2 final residency winners and will travel to Mallorca later this year for a 5-week artist residency at Hotel BonSol. His oil painting April Traveler is part of the Artist Suite Collection, curated by Hôtel Magique and Hotel BonSol as a result of the Call for Artist.
'April Traveler' by Bradley Wood
“The New York winter has been long and cold this spring, incredibly rainy and dreary, so in April in my studio, I started making a lot of paintings that transported me to the sun eclipse side of the Mediterranean, hence the name of the piece.
Inspired by Hotel BonSol and Mallorca, this artist call allowed me to travel to this magical place. I imagined myself there as if I had just arrived, umbrella in hand, now seated with a cocktail as excitement builds for the adventure to begin. I am, in a sense, the ‘April Traveler’.”
Why did you start creating art?
I look back decades and think about when I truly started making art, I think it’s when I realized I could actually use painting as my own form of therapy. It’s been a way of taking anxieties that are bothering me and actually harnessing that negative energy to create something positive to put back out into world.
What inspires you to create art today?
There are quite a few things I find inspiring and often reference in my work- events in my life, dreams, people watching, my love of film, art history, interior design, and the decorative arts.
Why did you apply for the Call for Artists?
Since visiting Spain and its southern shores a few years ago, I have dreamt of spending more time there to work, enjoy, and be influenced by its magic. Working in my New York studio on snowy winter days like today, I’m especially reminded of this.
Many of the paintings I’ve submitted are based on daydreams of what it would be like to paint by the Mediterranean shoreline—some may even look like they were actually painted there.
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