Overview

This substantial new monograph on Perth-born, London-based artist Tim Braden presents paintings and works on paper produced over the past twenty years. Featuring new and recent texts by Matt Incledon and Thomas Marks, along with abridged versions of key texts by Jennifer Higgie and Dominic Molon, the publication has been designed by Joe Gilmore and is co-published by Frestonian Gallery and Anomie Publishing, London. Tim Braden’s work sits at the meeting point of restlessness and order. His London studio mirrors this balance: serene white walls and clear worktables face shelves crammed with books, pinned postcards and sketches, racks of brushes and pigments, odd sculptures and suspended remnants of installations. That duality – calm structure alongside eclectic curiosity – animates his painting practice. Across two decades, Braden has resisted linear progression. Within weeks he might move from fine ink drawings to rich oil interiors or expansive acrylic abstractions. His exhibitions are curated like group shows – varied yet unified by a refined command of colour and the interplay between abstraction and figuration, each mode constantly informing the other. Braden’s subjects are equally diverse: mountains and interiors, books, posters, craftspeople and travellers, all rendered through a vivid and enquiring gaze. A formative visit to his cousin Patrick Heron’s studio sparked his lifelong fascination with colour; later influences, including Josef and Anni Albers and the Bauhaus legacy, deepened his engagement with craft, design and teaching. His landscapes – particularly mountains – form a language of peaks, lakes and snow through which he explores structure, scale and the subtleties of tone. Sometimes Western in perspective, sometimes aerial and Eastern in approach, they turn apparent emptiness, such as snow or sky, into delicate fields of chromatic activity. Human presence appears fleetingly – houses, figures or traces of printed media – reminding us that perception is always mediated. Braden’s North African works, especially from Tangier and Algiers, question how artists look at the ‘exotic’. He acknowledges the legacy of Orientalism by painting both the beauty and the filters through which it is seen, often embedding postcards or reproductions within his compositions. His working process preserves the immediacy of sketches even when scaled up, maintaining freshness and spontaneity. A parallel thread, explored in Making is Thinking, celebrates the artistry of labour. Braden paints weavers, gardeners and ceramicists – frequently women – paying homage to forms of making often dismissed as craft. He treats the act of creation as a shared human impulse, echoing Anni Albers’ belief in listening to ‘what the materials want to do’. Whether depicting the studios of admired painters, domestic interiors or his own home, Braden transforms rooms into quiet temples of colour and reflection. His garden scenes likewise suggest care and contemplation in an overstimulated world. Even his travel works – real or imagined – translate distant times and places into present moments of luminous equilibrium. Restless yet disciplined, Braden’s art embodies a profound, ongoing fascination with colour, making and seeing.

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9781910221754

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Author Information

Tim Braden (b. 1975, Perth, Scotland) is a London-based painter whose work fuses realism and abstraction to explore travel, memory and cultural history. His vibrant, colourful paintings invite viewers into imaginative worlds. He is represented by Frestonian Gallery (London) and Ryan Lee Gallery (New York). Thomas Marks is an editor, writer and cultural consultant. He served as Editor of Apollo magazine from 2013 to 2021, and has written widely on art, literature and cultural history. He is co-founder of the agency Marks|Calil, blending editorial insight with strategic advisory for arts and cultural organisations. Jennifer Higgie is a London-based writer and former editor of frieze. Her recent books include The Other Side: A Story of Women, Art and the Spirit World (2023) and The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of women’s self-portraits (2021). She hosts the National Gallery of Australia’s podcast, Artists’ Artists. Dominic Molon is a curator and writer, currently Interim Chief Curator and Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art at the RISD Museum, Rhode Island. Formerly at MCA Chicago and CAM St. Louis, he is known for insightful exhibitions linking contemporary art, popular culture and social themes. Matt Incledon is a contemporary gallerist, curator and writer, and is a founding Director of Frestonian Gallery in London. The gallery works with prominent artists such as Adrian Berg, Tim Braden, Hannah Brown, Minami Kobayashi and Barry McGlashan. He has edited numerous catalogues and monographs on the gallery’s artists.

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