The Brad Johannsen Archive

The Brad Johannsen Archive

“I knew Brad during his most artistically productive period. He lived in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn with the family of his artistic promoter, Howard Bloom. Brad arrived in New York around 1968, at about 19 years old, an already highly developed and gifted artist. I know nothing of his artistic training or background, although I know he was raised in Connecticut. He was tall with a large, blond afro. I knew psychedelic drugs fired his prolific imagination. I sense that he used the geometrically reconfigured reality of his drug experiences to create the unusual environments found in his work. If you look carefully at the faces he painted, It’s obvious he could have easily been a successful portrait artist. But that possibility apparently didn’t interest him. Brad was active mainly during the seventies, as far as I know. He died in his sixties around 2015.”

-Camille, review posted to amazon.com

My very first post here at this blog, about the artist Brad Johannsen, was in January 2015, when I provided an overview of the book 'Occupied Spaces.' Since that time I've made additional postings about Johannsen and his artwork.

As best as I can tell there is no online archive of Johannsen's works, or accounts of his life and times, so I have decided to post a 'Brad Johannsen Archive' and maintain it indefinitely. Hopefully, folks who Google Johannsen will arrive here at some point in their link-clicking, and get some information that otherwise is difficult to find.