STROKES of FAITH
Artist connects to creation through painting landscapes
Looking out on the windblown trees on a bluff in New Salem, Ga., Beth Bradford thinks about how life twists and turns people through different experiences. Those trees, along with rocks, rivers and mountains are what make up many of her landscape paintings, which are all based off scenery in Tennessee and Georgia.
Bradford, who lives on a 66-acre farm with her husband in Rising Fawn, Ga., often paints outside with friends during the summer and also takes photographs to work from in her studio, which is located upstairs in her home.
Her faith and artwork intertwine, she says.
“I paint landscapes because I feel that I can feel God’s love to us through his creation,” Bradford says. “I feel God in nature, so that’s why I respond to his love that way.”
She says her faith has gotten stronger since her college years, when she attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Atlanta College of Art, the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Bradford holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and a master’s in education.
“I feel like it’s important to have the connection to where you live and your experiences in your landscape,” Bradford says. “If you’ve been around here enough, you know we always have mountains in the distance, and the edges of the pines, they just become a part of you, your subconscious visual memory.”
Bradford started creating art when she was a child and has since had her work displayed in galleries in Chattanooga, Georgia and North Carolina.
She has taught art at Fairyland Elementary School on Lookout Mountain for 13 years and enjoys the children’s enthusiasm to learn the elements of its creation.
“I just remember like all my life, from being a little kid, drawing at night and running to the living room to show my dad, and he was so encouraging,” Bradford says. “The kids soak it up and produce these great things, and even when I give them very structured assignments, they’re all so creative that they can make them very different. That’s just really fun to see that every day.”
Bradford also has taught adults at Chattanooga State Community College, classes at Dade County High School, private art classes and lessons at a Chattanooga Parks and Recreation summer camp. She believes art “brings out the creativity in everyone.”
“Of course, not everybody likes art, but there’s always some kind of venue that they can use to express themselves, whether it’s sculpture, drawing, painting, splattering the paint or doing abstract or photography,” Bradford says. “I just think it’s so healthy for all of us to enjoy our creativity and just have fun.”
Bradford has been married for 28 years and has two daughters and a granddaughter. She also teaches children at New Salem United Methodist Church.
Bradford says she hopes viewers of her work will become immersed in the landscapes she paints.
“I do hope that they just feel the connection to landscape, the tree or the rock,” Bradford says.
Collections of her paintings are on display at two Chattanooga venues: at Reflections Gallery on Lee Highway through Aug. 25 and in the sanctuary of Unitarian Universalist Church on Navajo Drive through September.
Contact Kimberly Sebring at ksebring@ timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6315.