Remembering Gail Bradford 1951 – 2010 by Diane Thodos
I remember Gail as a slight and frail figure with very long dark curls and a shy, enigmatic expression that made her seem as though she was trying to peer beyond the substance of things. This certainly was true of her art: I witnessed her drawings as she built them up slowly, first as points and dots that were connected by thin and nervous constellations of lines that barely impressed themselves. Gradually a numinous face or figure would appear from the cloud of lines. I always was arrested by the profundity of their expressions and the listening glint that she often carefully placed in their eyes.
She joined our printmaking group at the Evanston Art Center in the mid 1990’s. I was struck by her quiet and intense working methods, and how memorable her images were compared to the works of thousands of artists I had seen as an art student in New York City and later as an art critic in Chicago. Like Giacometti and Morandi here was someone who imbedded an intense stillness of mood; she could freeze a moment of complete sincerity into each of her images. There were depths her work had, especially in how her shadowed figures mysteriously transmuted themselves to paper. Time stood still.
Many remember her as kind, generous, self effacing, and thoughtful of others. She certainly was all these things. Yet I also recall the artist and friend whose delicate line work fused the matter of her life onto paper much like the faint handwriting of Emily Dickinson’s poems bore the tides of deep and uncanny feelings onto tiny slips of paper. One year Gail sent me a card made from pearlescent paper that was folded to look like a small Japanese screen. On it was printed the Dickinson poem:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet never in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Truly Gail was this otherworldly bird. Her deep feeling was her gift – in her being, in her heart, in her art.
Drawing 10 x 7.5
Grandfather (detail) 22 x 12
Eden’s Grandmother 36 x 16
Eden drawing 8 x 5
Roof of a House etching 3 x 4.5
Madeleines etching 3 x 4.5
Beyond etching 3 x 4.5
etching 3 x 4.5
Amsterdam – Lewis etching 3 x 4.5
Pears etching
Eden drawing 39 x 23
Eden drawing 47 x 34
Violin etching
Category: Essays 9 comments »
March 1st, 2010 at 10:53 pm
a beautiful remembrance.
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:07 am
These portrait drawings are amazing, unpretentious and brilliant.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:13 am
I did not know that Gail had left us. When I read your note, I cried. She was a student of mine so many years ago and I thought she was a wonderful artist with great feeling in the work. Sometimes, in recent years, I would see her and her timid smile and her beautiful eyes. we would pass the time – so quietly.
And so, as she was to me in life, she has tiptoed silently away.
Please —information?
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Very nice Diane. Beautiful drawings and etchings.
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Thought I never knew Gail or her work, I wish I had after seeing this. Her artwork is very impressive and the memorial is beautiful.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Deeply felt wonderfully expressed. Thank you.
March 5th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Contact info:
Lauren Seaman Enslin (sister)
312-543-2999
enslindesign@aol.com
March 7th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
What a lovely tribute to Gail. Because of this written memorial you have given people like me who didn’t know her, the opportunity to get a glimpse of an amazing artist. Thank you for enriching more lives by passing this on.
March 12th, 2010 at 10:40 am
diane,
the picture of gail at the beginning is one i had not seen
she looks more like her mother
in the roof work, i see the russian heritage of her ” poppa ”
it is such a devastation that she is not with us
i found and put together all of the gifts she had given to me over the last 33 years of our friendship, as well as photos of her
she looked like her work
delicate, ethereal, spiritual and deep
beauty inside and out thanks, merle