9 Paintings with drapery and eggs

We are looking forward to opening 9 paintings of drapery and eggs, Justin Bradshaw’s solo exhibition in Rome on December 3rd. Join us from 6 - 8 pm at Via dei Banchi Vecchi 24.

Justin Bradshaw (b. 1971, London, U.K.)

Originally from East London and long established outside of Rome, Bradshaw paints vivid depictions of private interiors that summon a profound intimacy with the viewer. His recurring motif—the unmade bed—becomes a vacant theatre where presence is articulated through departure. Bradshaw conjures both corporeal weight and existential transience in these indices of a life just beyond the frame. These are not portraits in any conventional sense, but elegies to the ephemeral— meditations on memory and longing. His works document spaces where the body’s exhaustion and repose become metaphors for consciousness itself, for the eternal oscillation between presence and absence that defines the human condition.

Central to Bradshaw’s practice is an alchemical engagement with the materials of painting. He fabricates his own pigments, transmuting natural clays, minerals, and crystalline deposits—gathered during walks through the Italian countryside—alongside post-industrial remnants such as spent batteries. This synthesis of the organic and the manufactured dissolves boundaries between ancient and contemporary, natural and synthetic. Each act of foraging becomes both research and meditation, anchoring the studio within its surrounding landscape. The pigments—ochres, irons, and manganese earths—carry the geological memory of their origins, restoring to painting a direct material dialogue with the world.

His approach draws deeply from Renaissance painting treatises—from Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’Arte to Vasari’s reflections on artistic virtue—which inform his philosophy of practice. Yet his work is not revival but renewal: a contemporary reanimation of painting’s ancient intimacy with earth and figure.