While most people take great pleasure in popping cells of a bubble wrap, this artist injects them with paints to create portraits and sceneries of astounding beauty. Imagine filling up the bubbles individually with paint to create a pixilated photorealistic picture! But this is what Bradley Hart does and how!
This New York-based Canadian contemporary artist was first exposed to art through his family business of restaurant designing. This not only made him familiar with the workings of wood and metal shops but also ignited the artist in him. At the tender age of 11, he got enrolled in Thornton Hall, where he took classical art training for 20 hours a week. Here he got introduced to the great works of Renaissance masters.
Subsequently, Hart earned his BA from the University of Toronto with a double major in Visual Art. It was only a matter of time when this gifted contemporary artist found his own niche. Making bubble wrap his unique canvas, he developed a technique for creating injection paintings.
Hart’s injection process involves assigning a color code to each bubble that corresponds with a paint-loaded syringe. He does the assigning with the help of software he developed with a friend. After assigning the colors, he injects each cell of the bubble wrap with the assigned acrylic paint. The result is a pixelated hyperrealist recreation of the chosen image.
Hart’s subjects include portraiture of celebrities, common people, landscapes, objects, and abstracts. He chooses them from his personal collection of photographs. Just to give an idea what a back-breaking job his technique entails, it took him over 150 hours of injection work to create the portrait of Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder. For this, he used 89 different hues of paint.
The beauty of his art is not only in the pixilated bubble wrap but also in its byproduct that he calls Impression. For this, he overfills the bubbles and allows the paint to drip down from the flat side of the bubble wrap. He then lets this fused paint dry and removes it from the plastic. The result is an independent body of work that’s as incredible as his bubble art.
Today, Hart has etched his name among the top contemporary artists of the world. He’s represented by Anna Zorina Gallery in New York City, USA. His unique art has attracted over 32,000 fans on his Instagram page and counting.
Bradley Hart: Website | Instagram
