Bradley Hankey

Biography

Hankey is based in Los Angeles and studied at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. His work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the West Coast, as well as internationally in Italy, Tanzania, and Costa Rica.

Artist Statement

There are moments in my life where I see something that visually overwhelms me, and it’s like time stands still for a second. It’s like everything goes quiet, and I can hear myself breathe. These are moments that I know I have to paint. These glimpses of the city, of shifting light, and fleeting colors, stay with me long after the moment has passed. Painting is my way of slowing down and holding on to what resonates with me. I think of my process as “emotional realism,” a way of translating lived moments into layered, atmospheric paintings that balance realism with the emotional weight of what inspired me.

I'm obsessed with color, and my passion for color fuels my practice. Every hue is considered. I spend a lot of time mixing my oil colors. When painting, I love contrasting flat planes of color with more complex, layered mixtures. I frequently employ glazing, which is thin, transparent layers of paint that optically blend to create depth, atmosphere, and luminosity. Recently, I have embraced thicker, more tactile applications of paint, allowing the surface itself to carry energy and emotion.

While the imagery in my paintings are grounded in real places, my work is less about documentation than about distillation. Each work is an attempt to capture an emotional essence - a moment suspended in time - inviting the viewer to linger where light shifts, memory softens, and the familiar becomes surprising and new.