Exclusive Interview With Brad Kunkle, 1st Prize Winner of the RAYMAR Painting Award, 2025 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize by Addison Devereux
Brad Kunkle’s paintings unfold like quiet acts of revelation, where symbolism, the divine feminine, and the natural world exist in luminous balance. Working with gold and silver leaf alongside rich umber tones, he creates compositions that shift with changing light, as if emerging from somewhere unseen and then suddenly revealed. It lingers across the surface while shadow recede, revealing an emotional shift that unfolds with every glance. You want to stay there in the story, looking…interpreting.
Bathed in sepia tones, these contemplative works draw the viewer inward, where reflection gives way to knowing and intuition speaks more clearly than certainty. His figures embrace vulnerability and strength… shaped by nature and moonlight while holding you in trust, reflection, and a connection to something greater than ourselves. Rather than offering definitive answers, Brad Kunkle’s paintings leave space for our stillness, encouraging us to follow the quiet wisdom that so often reveals itself when we stop to listen.
Intro written by Bella Harris
Exclusive Interview with Brad Kunkle
In a 2015 interview, you brought up the pragmatic importance of light versus colour when discussing the truth in a limited colour palette. What draws you to your specific colour choices?
Umber feels ancient to me. It has this warmth that echoes the natural world. Grisaille, on the other hand, gives me a cool, sculptural neutrality for the figure. Those two together set the stage for the gold and silver leaf to do what they do best: behave like actual light rather than a painted imitation of it.
Color can be seductive, but it can also be distracting. When I remove it, I’m forced to deal honestly with value, form, and the emotional pull that light alone can create. There’s a kind of truth in that restraint—almost like tuning out the noise so you can hear one note clearly.
The leaf is reactive…it changes with the viewer, the time of day, the room it’s in. If I surrounded it with full-spectrum color, that quiet conversation between pigment and real light would get muddled. But against a limited palette—those umbers and greys—the metal becomes almost surreal, like something alive.
So, the palette isn’t about limitation for its own sake. It’s about creating a world where light feels sincere, where it can breathe and shift, and where the viewer becomes part of the painting simply by standing in front of it. That’s the draw.
“Umber feels ancient to me. It has this warmth that echoes the natural world. Grisaille, on the other hand, gives me a cool, sculptural neutrality for the figure. Those two together set the stage for the gold and silver leaf to do what they do best: behave like actual light rather than a painted imitation of it.” – Brad Kunkle
What does success look like to you as an artist and has that definition changed for you over the years?
Making honest, genuine works of art that connect with other humans on a mystical level, and selling them for enough money to support my family while prioritizing my time with them over the creation of the art. I used to care about getting into certain galleries or museums, but chasing this model is not that different from wanting more and more money and never feeling satisfied.
Large social media followings are great for our egos but they do not always translate to that core definition of success that I stated above. I’ve realized that I’m most content if I can make a painting, feel like I’ve made something unique/special, and then sell that to someone who loves it. That’s all I need.
In leaving the faith you were raised in and finding your own path, what challenges have you faced that have had an impact on the art you produce?
I wouldn’t say that I faced challenges in leaving my faith – if anything it freed me to explore many more spiritual aspects of humanity and our existence in the universe, which has informed my art. I was lucky enough to be raised in a faith that was not fundamentalist or have a family that turned their back on me.
My parents took some time to be ok with me not going to church but it was not that dramatic. They don’t attend church now either and they feel a closer connection to “God” while hiking in nature. Leaving, however, made me have compassion for anyone raised in a faith that was just given to them and not necessarily their own choice. The dogmas of faith can be stifling if you have not made a conscious choice of your own free will to commit to them.
If you woke up tomorrow and found that gold and silver leaf were no longer available to use, what would be your next choice to accentuate your pieces?
I’ve been slowly using less and less. I just wouldn’t accentuate. Black, white and umber is enough for me to carry on.
When you aren’t painting, what other hobbies do you engage in?
I read that you were in a band in your 20’s, are you still creating music? Ha…well…I have a 3-year-old son and 1 year old daughter, so my hobby is being a dad! My son and I just made a Free Hot Wheels Rescue Garage for the front yard. It’s like a Free Library where you can trade or take or leave a book, but for matchbox and hot wheels cars.
Yes, I was in a band called Aderbat and even though we all live in separate places in the country, we still piece together new songs from time to time. Dreaming of making another album with those guys. I suppose another hobby is fixing up our 1950’s mid-century modern house. I spend a lot of time doing that as well.
Who would be at your dinner party if you could invite three people, living or deceased, and why?
My grandmother and grandfather because I miss them. President Dwight Eisenhower so I can ask him if he really met with aliens at Area 51 in the 1950’s and then just listen to the conversation that unfolds between him and my grandparents after he divulges the details.
Your incredible submission to the Art Prize this year brings up the distortion of truth in social media.
With computer and Ai generated content now seeping into our everyday lives, where do you think truth can be found in art? Truth can be found in the visceral effect it has on us. You can’t deny the feelings you experience when you see or hear something that moves you or lifts you out of your everyday experience. I think we’re going to see a backlash to Ai generated art… at least from collectors and viewers that want human-made content.
Can an Ai model trick us or create something that makes us feel? Probably. But I think we turn to art to connect to other people. If we find out that we “fell” for something that was created by Ai… it will start to feel like cat-fishing in the dating world. We all want REAL connections to other people… and I think we’ll seek them more and more as Ai seeps into the fabric of society.
“For a long time I was imagining my work without the figure in it, and sort of asking the viewer to be the figure. These new works are a manifestation of that vision.” – Brad Kunkle
How do you see your work changing over the next decade and do you see yourself exploring other mediums?
I’ve been creating these portal-like landscapes recently, and I think I’ll be exploring them more and more. For a long time I was imagining my work without the figure in it, and sort of asking the viewer to be the figure. These new works are a manifestation of that vision.
Why did you enter the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize?
I’ve never entered a competition as a professional artist, and I wondered a bit about how my work would be perceived after doing this for almost 15 years now. Also..the combination of BB Magazine’s prestige, international exposure and …the prizes!
What do you feel you have gained from this experience?
A renewed sense of excitement to keep creating my work to share with the world. I’ve also learned about some new artists that I was previously unfamiliar with. The Grand Prize winners’ Xavier Escala and Nina Murashkina’s piece is magical.