Carolyn Brady

Carolyn Brady (May 22, 1937 – May 5, 2005) was an American photorealist painter and artist. Her work often consists of hyper-realistic watercolors of flowers and table settings.

Early works Carolyn Brady studied art at the University of Oklahoma in Norman from 1958 to 1961 before moving to New York where she lived until the end of her life. Her early professional works consisted of large fabric panels of linen appliqué often with a literal component, probably inspired by her first job in New York as a textile designer. Most had vibrant, saturated colors with little or no shading, and used furniture or interior scenes for their subject matter.

Watercolors Early on, Brady became acquainted with the photorealist Joseph Raffael (she sub-let his apartment in 1962) and later identified him as her largest influence.

Her works gradually increased in complexity and size. Her largest works (5 feet by 7.5 feet) were meticulously rendered fields of blooming flowers painted to the very edge of the paper. In the 1980s, table place settings, sometimes clean, sometimes with food partly consumed, became a favorite and frequent subject. "Her sensual and psychological appreciation for the elements of her meals takes them out of the category of reportage and into poetry, "

Exhibitions and collections Brady's works have been exhibited in museums around the world, including the Baltimore Museum of Art (Maryland), the National Museum of American Art (Washington, DC), the Miyagi Museum of Art (Miyagi, Japan), the Orlando Museum of Art (Florida), the Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), and the National Academy of Design (New York).

Her works are currently in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Museum of American Art, (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC), the Art Institute of Chicago (Illinois), the Saint Louis Art Museum (Missouri), and many others.